As the UNC celebrates its 26th anniversary this week, one of the realities for the discipline of political science that must be faced is that the advent of serious two-party politics in this country only emerged in the 1990s after the formation of the UNC.
The emergence of the NAR as a vehicle for the removal of the PNM from office for the first time in 30 unbroken years of power in 1986 was a game changer in local politics. For the first time, the PNM had a serious political challenge that had the capacity to remove it from power.
It was the schism within the NAR between ANR Robinson and Basdeo Panday that opened the door to the formation of CLUB 88 on October 16, 1988, at the Aranguez Savannah. After that, the UNC was formed on April 30, 1989, and popular support for the NAR dwindled after that.
The first political leader of the UNC, Basdeo Panday, made his initial foray into electoral politics as a candidate for the Workers and Farmers Party (WFP) that had been formed by CLR James in time for the 1966 general election. James was a former academic colleague of Eric Williams at Oxford and was later involved with the PNM as the editor of the Nation, the party’s newspaper.
The search for labour unity between the unions in oil and sugar was a cause célèbre for James. Writing in his autobiography, Inward Hunger: The Education of a Prime Minister, Eric Williams had this to say about James and the struggle to unite oil and sugar unions at page 311: “My outstanding responsibility in Parliament in the second five-year period was the Industrial Stabilisation Act. This was introduced on March 18th, 1965, in a situation in which we had had to declare a state of emergency in the sugar areas. The subversive elements in the society, with James in the forefront, were at work, the background was an open attempt to link the trade unions in oil and sugar.”
Uniting the unions in oil and sugar had first been achieved by Adrian Cola Rienzi in the 1930s when he became the first president general of both the OWTU and All Trinidad Sugar Estates and Factory Workers Trade Union. That feat has never been repeated by any labour leader since that time, and Rienzi was only recognised for his contribution by the State in 2012, for the 50th anniversary of independence, when he was awarded the ORTT, the highest national award, posthumously.
Panday adopted James’ philosophy of uniting the unions in oil and sugar after he became President General of the All Trinidad union and their headquarters was named the Rienzi Complex. After the formation of the United Labour Front (ULF), its headquarters was based at the Rienzi Complex in Couva. That venue has continued to be the headquarters of the UNC ever since its formation in 1989.
In 1990, the UNC replaced the PNM as the official Opposition in Parliament and in 1991, the party won 13 seats in the general election. By 1995, the party formed the Government in a post-election coalition together with the NAR in a hung Parliament that was divided 17-17-2 between the PNM, UNC and NAR respectively. The coalition with the NAR ended in 2000 and the first party to introduce direct elections for positions on its executive was the UNC in 2001.
Those first internal elections led to divisions within the party and it fell from government shortly after when there was a schism between Panday and Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj. Internal elections were delayed until 2005 and Panday became party chairman while surrendering the leadership to Winston Dookeran who would resign in 2006 and form the COP.
Internal elections were delayed again until 2010 and Kamla Persad-Bissessar would become the leader defeating both Panday and Maharaj.
The inability of the UNC and the COP to form a coalition in the 2007 general election provided an opening for the PNM to win a majority of seats with a minority of votes as the UNC and the COP split each other’s votes.
The creation of a different kind of coalition arrangement for the 2010 general election was concluded in great haste as prime minister Manning called a snap general election for May 24, 2010, that did not work out in his favour.
The coalition between five political parties, namely the UNC, COP, TOP, NJAC and MSJ, created a new philosophy of government by oversized coalition in a situation where the UNC won 21 of the 41 seats and entered government as the dominant entity with its coalition partners.
One of Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s major contributions to the politics of the country has been the sustenance of coalition politics and power sharing. This is further reflected in her attempt to amend the UNC’s constitution to engage in a formalisation of the coalition method within the UNC.
As the UNC celebrates another anniversary, its emergence out of a philosophy of labour unity in the ULF under Panday has led it to a philosophy of wider coalition politics today under Persad-Bissessar.