The Pandemic Polls 2020 Voting In a time of COVID

Masks and shields accompanined stained ink fingers in the 2020 Pandemic Polls to accomodate voting in a time of Novel Corona Virus COVID-19.

What does the 2020 Pandemic Polls hold in store? This would unfurl in the next few hours. The reportedly heavy voter turn out already suggests how pivotal the population views these polls as some 125 candidates vie for 41 seats in the Parliament’s House of Representatives. But the challenges remain for whoever take the helm henceforth into the Post Pandemic Planet.

The novel elements of these Pandemic Polls makes it difficult to call, and it may indeed provide some suprises for many and deviate substantially too from previous polling deviations.

Among the primary issues in 2020 is returning stability from the impacts of the Novel Corona Virus.

Economic Recovery

A downsliding economy is sliding into further depression with allegations of massive corruption and high levels of crime, violence and criminaltiy. This is compounded with the economic lock down that has seen many businesses resorting to retrenchment and shutdown. Unemployment, downsizing and shutdown owing to COVID-19 leaves many uncertain of their future

No Country for Old Men

There is no doubt that youth is the central element and focus of this election. The challenges emerging from the Pandemic demands novel solutions that can break with the tried and failed politics of the past and forge new directions for this small twin island country. Metaphorically speaking, it suggests that – to adjust Yates’ phrase, this is no country for old men

Digital Schooling Futures

Among the hardest hit arena is schooling, which ground to a halt. Online and digital learning systems, materials, as well as teacher digital competence are largely underdeveloped. The availability of digital infrastructure and equipment to maintain the high levels of schooling and literacy thrown into uncertainty from mismanagement of education prior to COVID-19 has placed this near the top of the election agenda. The most affected are those in primary schools. Yet amidst this uncertainty, they are mandated to write the Secondary Entrance Exam which is sheduled for ten days after the election.

Social Distress

The health, education and economic downslide have exarcerbated and heightened social stress, as the number of COVID-19 cases continue to climb.

Glance back at Elections Past

While the Pandemic places an entirely new spin on this, the 2020 General Election, a glance back at the past elections may set the stage in understanding the issues at stake in this. These have been and continue to be mismanaged diversity and social inclusion, high levels of corruption, crime, violence and criminality, rural neglect.

Other factors are the ingrained machismo culture, embryonic and immature gender mainstreaming, bureaucratic inflexibility, issues of entitlement and privileging, and perceived official indifference and disrespect.

Tectonic Shifts

Aberrations that showed significant tectonic shifts in electoral habits occurred twice in the young self-governing life of this twin-island republic.

The novelty of this takes me back to the heady election I first covered as a journalist, the landmark 1986 election that interrupted voting habits that were entrenched since 1956.

Budget Bogeyman

The country’s oil-based economy that has supported widespread corruption mismanagement. With this has emerged the Budget Bogeyman and the threat of stringent imposing taxes and other measures on the already stressed and strained population.

Usually, general elections were called before budgets as budgets were instruments to sweeten the appetites of voters. But this election deviated from that norm. It takes place before the 2020 Budget, which suggests and raises suspicion that the traditional electoral budget goodies may not be in the offering this time around, given the ongoing shrinking economy augmented by the economic adjustments from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Emerging Rural Issues

I was just entering journalism, and the limited staff of south desk, afforded the opportunity to cover large span of electoral districts in the South. Iwas also able to identify and represent emerging issues in rural communities that would have become lost to posterity, given the limited staff and resources of the South Bureau of the Trinidad Guardian the time.

Hallmark Electoral Year

The year 1986 was a hallmark one for Trinidad and Tobago, when a coalition of electoral forces upset the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) in a landslide 33-3 in the December 15 General Elections. There were then 36 seats in the House of Representatives.

Cry for accomodation of diversity

In power since 1956 , the PNM was forced to give way to the growing forces of diversity which went largely unrecognised in the two party system. Responding to the cry for accomodation of diversity, four parties – the United Labour Front (ULF), the Organization for National Reconstruction (ONR), the Democratic Action Congress (DAC) and the Tapia House Movement (TAP) – formed an umbrella party and was led by Mr. Arthur N.R. Robinson called the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR). The Challenges of Diversity persisted. Among the main campaign issues of the day were corruption, inequities and underdevelopment.

In April 1989 Basdeo Panday, leader of the United Labour Front, along with other dissidents formed a new party, the United National Congress (UNC). The UNC, with six seats in the House of Representatives, replaced the PNM as the main Opposition Party.

Attempted Coup

In July 1990, a radical group attempted a coup. It took the then Prime Minister Arthur N. R. Robinson and five Ministers hostage for five days, provoking an outbreak of rioting and looting in the capital. The hostages were released on the promise of an amnesty.

Over the 20-year period from 1990 to 2010 witnessed a virtual deadlock and tug of war in its political processes that I have dealt with in considerable debt in my historical analyses of the politics leading to the 2010 General Election in my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling.

Gender Politics of 2010

In 2010, gender equity and equality became the prime issue. The country saw its first woman Prime Minister in Kamla Persad-Bissessar with a coalition People’s Partnership Government. The Partnership comprised of four political parties: the United National Congress (ULF), the Congress of the People (COP), the Tobago Organization of the People (TOP), the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) against the government of Patrick Manning. of the PNM. The coalition won the election to hold 27 out of 41 seats in the House of Representatives.

Machismo Culture

However, the ingrained machismo culture, embryonic and immature gender mainstreaming, bureaucratic inflexibility, issues of entitlement and privileging, and meanderings compounded the ongoing challenges of diversity. Rifts and fractures in the Parnership led to it being voted out office in 2015 in favour of the PNM.

Electoral System

The Trinidad and Tobago electoral system is based on the British colonial WestMinister System. Members of the House of Representatives are elected by first-past-the-post voting. The winner take all systems provides for a winner from the party who gets the majority in the most number of seats, rather than a representative system of the party with the highest number of votes or proportional representative system.

The convoluted picture of Trinidad and Tobago politics in Global, Caribbean and Local Contexts amalgamate my journalistic coverage of the last three and a half decades of electoral politics along with analyses, commentaries, in my blog Demokrissy and books, articles, multimedia and other presentations on television, conferences. These are contained in my digital archives, galleries and online learning platforms in preparation.

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