On elec­tion night in Ja­maica–Sep­tem­ber 3, 2007, I vis­it­ed the Elec­toral Of­fice of Ja­maica (EOJ). Bruce Gold­ing’s Ja­maica Labour Par­ty (JLP) was on the way to de­feat­ing Por­tia Simp­son-Miller’s Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Par­ty (PNP).

“I have the great­est re­spect for the men and women who de­cide to put them­selves through the elec­toral process,” Danville Walk­er, di­rec­tor of Elec­tions, told me.

Walk­er’s words have stayed with me, over the course of re­port­ing more than a dozen elec­tions and be­ing a Com­mon­wealth ob­serv­er in one—the land­locked, moun­tain­ous south­ern African king­dom of Lesotho, in 2012. They came back to me on Nom­i­na­tion Day.

The sights and sounds on April 4 were stir­ring. Crisp white shirts. Many in their Sun­day best. Tas­sa Ter­rence. Can­di­dates march­ing with fam­i­ly and sup­port­ers. The joy of Jear­lean John, who locked arms with her posse. Mick­ela Pan­day broke cov­er in Cou­va North, the seat once held by her fa­ther, Bas­deo Pan­day.

The day al­so served up amuse­ment. Lar­ry Lal­la seem­ing­ly pho­to­bomb­ing every­one, amid skep­ti­cism about whether his over­ly-ea­ger Dam­a­scene con­ver­sion was gen­uine. Bar­ry Padarath com­plain­ing about hav­ing to walk a long dis­tance in the rain, while wear­ing chunky Karl Lager­feld-style de­sign­er sun­glass­es. Philip Ed­ward Alexan­der giv­ing off un­der­tak­er vibes with black on black in the trop­i­cal heat.

The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion says there are 161 can­di­dates rep­re­sent­ing 17 par­ties in the 41 con­stituen­cies. Three of the can­di­dates are in­de­pen­dent. Who will win? I’ll let the poll­sters make that call, but I am go­ing to call some wides and no-balls.

Let’s start by stat­ing the ob­vi­ous. If there was any­thing like elec­toral ac­count­abil­i­ty, the elec­torate of T&T would be invit­ing the Gov­ern­ment of Stu­art Young to take a seat. Have a spell in op­po­si­tion. Let’s see what the oth­er guys can do. The Gov­ern­ment’s two con­spic­u­ous fail­ures are the econ­o­my and se­cu­ri­ty. A good pro­por­tion of T&T cit­i­zens doesn’t feel fi­nan­cial­ly or safe­ty-se­cure.

The prob­lem for the Prime Min­is­ter–reck­oned by neu­tral out­siders to be the most able fel­low in the red ranks–is that he is close­ly tied to those fail­ures be­cause of the of­fices he has held, and be­cause of his close­ness to the pre­vi­ous prime min­is­ter, who has to car­ry the can.

Young has dan­gled in­trigu­ing new ini­tia­tives such as a DOGE-like of­fice to cut red tape. How­ev­er, you can­not cred­i­bly be seen as a change agent, when you are per­ceived as a chaos agent. The dy­nam­ic Fos­ter Cum­mings stood a bet­ter chance than Young did of be­ing seen to rep­re­sent change.

And yet, the Op­po­si­tion UNC does not look and sound like a gov­ern­ment in wait­ing. They seem more like a frat­ri­ci­dal fan club; with their leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ac­cru­ing too much pow­er.

Every MP who stood on an al­ter­na­tive slate at last year’s par­ty in­ter­nal elec­tions has been re­moved. For a par­ty that likes to sing the prais­es of Don­ald Trump, they failed to ab­sorb one of his key lessons–prag­ma­tism, in be­ing pre­pared to work with for­mer ri­vals such as Mar­co Ru­bio, his Sec­re­tary of State.

A “con artist” was one of Mar­co Ru­bio’s milder in­sults of Trump, when they com­pet­ed in the 2016 Re­pub­li­can pri­ma­ry.

The im­pres­sive and cere­bral Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly saw the writ­ing on the wall and jumped be­fore he was pushed. Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne was the UNC’s most ef­fec­tive shad­ow min­is­ter. De­s­e­lect­ed. Rush­ton Paray is a for­mi­da­ble politi­cian. I get on well with both him and Nicholas Mor­ris (a fel­low an­glophile and foot­ball ob­ses­sive), but Mor­ris’ can­di­da­cy should have been else­where. What­ev­er fa­mil­ial ties he may have to Ma­yaro, he could not have run against one of the par­ty’s big hit­ters with­out the en­cour­age­ment of his leader. Mor­ris has been on a clear tra­jec­to­ry to Par­lia­ment through the UNC’s youth ranks, and may come in­to his own. How­ev­er, he is cur­rent­ly nowhere near as sea­soned or ready for gov­ern­ment as Paray seem­ing­ly is.

The de­fen­es­tra­tion was a ter­ri­ble waste of tal­ent. It’s dif­fi­cult to see who in the UNC is ca­pa­ble of giv­ing can­did coun­sel to Per­sad-Bisses­sar. It’s al­so a fail­ure of the par­ty’s el­der states­men. In any prop­er­ly func­tion­al par­ty, one of them would have put on a pot, popped a bot­tle and locked every­one in a room till they re­paired every­thing.

Orin Gor­don is a com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant. He can be reached at orin@oringor­don.com