GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists say Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley act­ed with­in the law by de­clar­ing Au­gust 10 as the gen­er­al elec­tion date.

Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said the date would be a “nor­mal elec­tion,” ex­plain­ing that a gen­er­al elec­tion is nor­mal­ly due just around the fifth an­niver­sary of the pre­vi­ous elec­tion.

“It was ex­pect­ed. In fact, oth­er po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies were say­ing that the elec­tion would have been called even ear­li­er in Ju­ly,” Ra­goonath told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

“I have seen some an­a­lysts say­ing the Gov­ern­ment was sup­posed to give three months no­tice, no way. The Gov­ern­ment is sup­posed to give 35 days no­tice and in that con­text the Gov­ern­ment did noth­ing wrong.”

Ra­goonath said giv­en that the elec­tion was an­tic­i­pat­ed, last week’s protests in Port-of-Spain and oth­er parts of the coun­try, along with neg­a­tive sen­ti­ments from the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion re­gard­ing grow­ing un­em­ploy­ment and the high cost of liv­ing, could not be seen as fac­tors forc­ing the PM’s hand in call­ing the elec­tion.

“In terms of what is hap­pen­ing eco­nom­i­cal­ly and so­cial­ly, the Prime Min­is­ter, be­ing a politi­cian and want­i­ng to win an elec­tion, would have had to call the elec­tion soon­er rather than lat­er,” he said.

“The Prime Min­is­ter would have had the op­tion of call­ing the elec­tion by lat­est at De­cem­ber 22. How­ev­er, giv­en the state of the econ­o­my and the so­cial sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try, the longer the Prime Min­is­ter takes to call the elec­tion, chances are things are go­ing to get pro­gres­sive­ly worse.” Ra­goonath not­ed that while there re­mains a gen­er­al feel­ing of dis­con­tent­ment in the so­ci­ety, this may not nec­es­sar­i­ly im­pact vot­er turn out. He ex­plained that about 65 per cent of the elec­torate would nor­mal­ly vote.

“The peo­ple you have to con­sid­er are the swing vot­ers, those who are not com­mit­ted one way or the oth­er to one par­ty or the oth­er,” Ra­goonath added.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Mukesh Bas­deo al­so agreed it was not a snap elec­tion as some have sug­gest­ed, as it was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due. How­ev­er, he said the ques­tion re­mains whether or not the se­lect­ed can­di­dates will have an im­pact for their re­spec­tive po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

“The im­pact will be on the out­skirts of con­stituen­cies. For ex­am­ple, will the can­di­date for Barataria/San Juan have an im­pact on St Joseph for ex­am­ple? This is the rip­ple ef­fect you’re look­ing at,” Bas­deo ex­plained.

“Does the choice of St Au­gus­tine af­fect Tu­na­puna? So the choice of can­di­date is im­por­tant but the po­si­tion of the par­ty is al­so an im­por­tant fac­tor.”

Bas­deo added that the win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty is al­so very short giv­en that it is five weeks away for the gen­er­al elec­tion. He said there are al­so oth­er vari­ables which must be fac­tored in, in­clud­ing the state of the econ­o­my and the re­cent protests in Port-of-Spain over the po­lice killings of three men in Mor­vant.

“I think this is go­ing to have an im­pact be­cause the ma­jor­i­ty of per­sons of a par­tic­u­lar age group, if clas­si­fied ac­cord­ing to vot­ing be­hav­iour, they would be clas­si­fied around the age of 18 to 32.

“They rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant core of vot­ers and how will this im­pact up­on vot­ing be­hav­iour in con­stituen­cies? Will it have a rip­ple ef­fect? Will this rip­ple ef­fect be along the east/west cor­ri­dor?” Bas­deo added.