Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed has de­scribed for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s re­cent pub­lic en­dorse­ment of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) as a po­lit­i­cal bomb­shell.

“Why this is big is be­cause John Je­re­mie served in the PNM Gov­ern­ment, he was part of the fab­ric and foun­da­tion of what con­sti­tut­ed a Man­ning Cab­i­net.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dr Mo­hammed said the move, which comes days ahead of the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, has the mag­ni­tude to cre­ate shifts among the elec­torate.

Dur­ing a UNC meet­ing in Pe­nal on Mon­day, Je­re­mie made a shock­ing ap­pear­ance and went a step fur­ther by de­clar­ing his sup­port for the UNC.

“Tonight, as an ed­u­cat­ed Black man with aca­d­e­m­ic and na­tion­al ac­com­plish­ments, I stand here to en­dorse the UNC. I stand to re­ject that state­ment of hate.”

Dr Mo­hammed fur­ther con­tend­ed that Je­re­mie’s en­dorse­ment, which comes on the heels of the res­ig­na­tion of sev­er­al UNC mem­bers, in­clud­ing Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, who has since gone on to pledge his al­le­giance with the PNM, can con­sol­i­date the UNC’s ap­peal.

“That is not or­di­nary; that is ex­tra­or­di­nary. If they thought Lar­ry Lal­la cross­ing over to the PNM was big, then this is big­ger than that be­cause Lar­ry Lal­la, while a re­spect­ed Se­nior Coun­sel, didn’t hold po­lit­i­cal of­fice to the ex­tent and mag­ni­tude to which Mr Je­re­mie did, so any­thing is ex­pect­ed. And yes, we can look for­ward to them pulling out the stops.”

He said that giv­en Je­re­mie’s his­to­ry with the PNM, his align­ment now with the UNC raised ques­tions about the fac­tors that would have forced him to switch al­le­giances.

“For some­thing of that lev­el to take place, there has to be an is­sue or mat­ters cat­a­clysmi­cal­ly wrong in the coun­try for a con­scious de­ci­sion of that na­ture to oc­cur. This is part of a big­ger po­lit­i­cal shift that would have been cal­cu­lat­ed but al­so not one for the faint-heart­ed.”

Dr Mo­hammed said the move was tan­ta­mount to what he de­scribed as “next-lev­el pol­i­tics” and not­ed the tim­ing of the align­ment.

“I don’t know if the PNM has more sur­pris­es in their back pock­et, but we are see­ing now that the UNC is start­ing to peak a bit. What they have to be aware of is that they can­not be­come over­con­fi­dent, and ar­ro­gance can­not be part of their char­ac­ter­is­tics. They can’t be­come over­con­fi­dent. The next two weeks are very telling and im­por­tant.”

Dr Win­ford James cau­tious about im­pact on elec­torate

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James said while he was sur­prised by Je­re­mie’s move, he was un­cer­tain about how many ad­di­tion­al sup­port­ers the en­dorse­ment would draw to the UNC. 

“His en­dorse­ment is big; it may not be suf­fi­cient, but he is one that you will want to see more of. Je­re­mie might in­flu­ence some un­de­cid­ed peo­ple. There may be those who would not have been hap­py with how Dr Row­ley ran the place and some peo­ple who may not even be vot­ing; those peo­ple can have their minds changed.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dr James ref­er­enced last No­vem­ber’s US Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion, which saw the Re­pub­li­can par­ty de­feat the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty de­spite high-pro­file per­son­al­i­ties throw­ing sup­port be­hind for­mer vice pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris.

“Very fa­mous peo­ple had en­dorsed Ka­mala Har­ris, some al­so en­dorsed Trump as well, but I’m mak­ing the point that en­dorse­ments do not nec­es­sar­i­ly lead to the par­ty that you have en­dorsed be­ing suc­cess­ful in the elec­tion.”

Dr Maukesh Bas­deo: Po­lit­i­cal land­scape flu­id

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Maukesh Bas­deo, mean­while, ex­plained that Je­re­mie’s pub­lic en­dorse­ment of the UNC un­der­scored the flu­id na­ture of the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal land­scape.

“The pol­i­tics of the day is cur­rent­ly shift­ing. You saw Mr Lal­la a cou­ple of weeks ago at­tend­ing the PNM ral­ly and then on a PNM plat­form, and then you had last night’s event with Mr Je­re­mie en­dors­ing Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Are we in for more sur­pris­es? What we are see­ing is a move­ment across the po­lit­i­cal di­vide.”

Dr Bas­deo told Guardian Me­dia that the move­ments re­flect un­der­ly­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion with­in par­ty ranks and sig­nal a pe­ri­od of trans­for­ma­tion in the po­lit­i­cal are­na.