Renu­ka Singh

The re­cent so­cial un­rest in Port-of-Spain will not be enough to un­seat the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) from gov­ern­ment.

This was the view of po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James on Fri­day, mo­ments af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced Au­gust 10 as the date.

James said al­though the PNM was “most def­i­nite­ly” los­ing some of the po­lit­i­cal good­will it had built up by its han­dling of the COVID-19 virus, he didn’t be­lieve the protests had any­thing to do with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s de­ci­sion to call an elec­tion in five weeks’ time.

“Bet­ter now than lat­er. The un­rest will hard­ly dent sup­port for the PM and the PNM,” James said.

On Thurs­day, the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced the for­ma­tion of a com­mit­tee to bet­ter un­der­stand what is go­ing on in the “hot spot,” high crime ar­eas of east Port-of-Spain fol­low­ing three days of protests start­ing in Mor­vant and end­ing in the cap­i­tal over the po­lice killings of three men in M0rvant.

There was spec­u­la­tion in some quar­ters that this dis­con­tent in PNM strong­holds could af­fect the par­ty in the elec­tions. But James said he be­lieved the PNM’s han­dling of the coro­n­avirus “still res­onates well with the cit­i­zen­ry.”

How­ev­er, James did pin­point what he felt may be one of the rea­sons for the sud­den elec­tion call.

“The econ­o­my will like­ly wors­en lat­er in the year,” he said.