At the time of writing, the preliminary results of last Monday’s local government elections were available with recounts taking place in some areas. The general consensus appears to be that there was a very low voter turnout. There may be various reasons for this, but it would be unsafe to speculate about why so many people did not vote.
In 2013, there was the highest-ever turnout of voters in any local government elections. There were obvious declines in many areas which would have to be further analysed carefully when the final official results are declared.
However, in examining some early preliminary results it would appear that Trinidad has retained the status of a two-party state between the PNM and the UNC. The COP, ILP and MSJ failed to register anything significant in the areas where they contested.
Not long after the general election last year, former COP leader Prakash Ramadhar declared that there was no longer any People’s Partnership. That was confirmed for this local government election as the COP contested seats against the UNC and the PNM. The COP’s performance was unimpressive as a perusal of unofficial results in Curepe/Pasea, Kelly Village/Warrenville, La Florrisante/Lopinot, St Augustine South/Piarco/St Helena and Valsayn/St Joseph in the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation can confirm.
Another COP candidate in Les Efforts West/La Romain in the San Fernando City Corporation also performed far below 2013 levels when the party actually won that seat. The COP outcome this year was only in double digits and the PNM won the seat for the first time in 24 years.
One of the realities that emerged in the political contests last Monday was that the COP had been the beneficiary of UNC voters supporting them in areas where there were COP candidates as a result of the prior tactical avoidance strategy of being in a partnership.
The three-way contests last Monday confirmed this phenomenon when the data from 2013 is analysed alongside the preliminary results.
Another party that emerged to challenge the UNC, moreso than any other political party, was the National Solidarity Assembly which was linked to the All Trinidad Sugar Workers Union in Couva. Their performance was also sub-standard however, in one instance, they did make an impact on an outcome in the Sangre Grande Regional Corporation where the unofficial pre-recount tally was PNM-1,359, UNC-1,314 and NSA-78. With a 45-vote defeat for the UNC and 78 votes earned by the NSA, they did make the difference in that particular seat as the PNM won by a plurality and not a majority.
That opened the door to a 4-4 tie in elected councillors and the proportional representation allocation would appear to be 2-2, thereby giving the corporation an even split in its membership between the PNM and the UNC.
The amendment of the Municipal Corporations Act in 2013 abolished the winner-take-all system for aldermen and replaced it with proportional representation allocations based on the total votes cast for each party in the entire corporation.
There was never any tie-breaking system for the election of mayors, chairmen, etc, as the drawing of lots was previously applied to the winner-take-all system for electing aldermen.
Positions on all corporations are now completely elected, either on the first past-the-post system for councillors or the Hare method of proportional representation for aldermen.
If the electorate in Sangre Grande voted for a tie, then an opportunity arises for the PNM and the UNC to come together in a power-sharing/coalition arrangement for the benefit of the community, moreso than their respective parties. There was a clear signal from the electorate of Sangre Grande that they wanted an equally divided corporation.
Going the route of power-sharing and a coalition arrangement in the interest of the community will break the mould of the hegemonic dominance-driven model that has bedeviled our politics to the extent that the relationship between both major parties is akin to warfare without the weapons.
This is a major challenge for our political culture of political dominance and will, in fact, raise the profile of servant leadership to a new level so that those people elected as councillors or chosen by their parties as aldermen from their lists can now be validated in their service. Such validation will not come from their party identity, but rather from their election/selection to serve.
The tie can be broken by the application of what is known in political science terms as a consociational method that is based on accommodative political behaviour that searches for consensus, rather than division. Can our major political parties seek to try this method in Sangre Grande as a test case for other ways of governing besides the constant search for dominance and hegemony?
The welfare of the people of Sangre Grande is at stake because the result is what they voted for. Using the coalition method presents an opportunity, not for tactical and strategic political advantage, but rather for servant leadership. That will be the qualitative difference for the UNC, while for the PNM it will represent a complete overhaul of the way that the party has approached governance from inception.