Daly Bread: The PNM’s election year excuse

A second volume of The Daly Commentaries—a selection of these weekly columns from 2016-2023, picking up from my first volume covering 2002 to 2015—has been published. Information about its release concludes this column.

During my twenty-two plus years as a columnist, I have had the unstinting support of the Express editors.

Ironically, when recently submitting a column and making reference to when the next general election is due, without specifying the constitutionally permitted grace period after the maximum term of a Parliament has expired, the Express Editor in Chief (for whose diligence and insight I have great praise) raised this with me.

I then readily added for clarity that “the latest permissible date for the next general election is November next year (2025)”.

This year, 2024, is not a year of a general election unless the current Prime Minister (the PM) and Political Leader of the People’s National Movement (the PNM), as he is entitled to do, calls it ahead of the mandatory time to do so.

It is curious therefore that he seeks to explain the abrupt cancellation of the PNM convention and internal election scheduled for 17 November, by reference to a “PNM tradition” not to have an internal election “in any year of a general election”. (See Trinidad Express, 4 November 2024.)

Has it has slipped out perhaps that the PM had been or is seriously considering making this “a year of a general election” by calling it early?

The stagnation and split of the opposition United National Congress (the UNC) and the worsening socio-economic conditions in our currently murderous land would likely provide strong incentives to call the general election this year before things get even worse.

Presumably however, the blight of defeat when a previous prime minister and political leader of the PNM, Patrick Manning (deceased), called elections early, must be a troubling concern.

The PM also tries to diminish a suggestion that the results of the earlier internal election of the PNM Youth League held in October “spooked” the hierarchy. The PM does so by taking an unconvincing position that his awareness of what happened in the Youth League was limited to what he read in the media.

However, sources had already revealed that a group within the PNM had been jolted by the results of the Youth League elections and, according to a report in the Express of 27 October 2024, a lot happened in connection with and at the Youth League event that was politically noteworthy.

Will any of this matter, even if there is now a tussle for political leadership of the PNM? That is unlikely, given the history of reported rejections of aspiring candidates in both main political parties.

This history was summarized in an editorial in the Trinidad Guardian in February 2015, which made this statement:

“The rejection of the nominees of constituency party groups by the leadership of political parties at the level of the screening committee is part of the political culture of T&T’s electoral politics: party groups select and the leaderships accept or reject.”

In such a political culture, the dust of such tussles usually settles and the party closes ranks behind the political leader. That is the only option when members of the political party, many of whom have positions to protect or state-funded livelihoods, fear for their political future or their livelihoods and vested interests outside wait to see where and how to jump.

There is not much opportunity for effective democracy within that political culture and dissent risks burial in the political cemetery.

The two volumes of The Daly Commentaries, are, I hope, modest contributions to the history of two decades, elaborated by footnotes superbly compiled by Judy Raymond.

The new volume will be formally launched early in January 2025 when I am able to present copies to The National Library and Information System Authority (NALIS)—by whom I was warmly received when the first volume of The Daly Commentaries was published.

Editor’s note: Copies for sale are available at: Bottles and Bites (San Fernando), Metropolitan Bookstore, the Writers Centre and Chaud Cafe (Port of Spain), Scribbles and Quills (Chaguanas) and the Lloyd Best Institute (Tunapuna).

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Martin Daly

Martin G Daly SC is a prominent attorney-at-law. He is a former Independent Senator and past president of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago.
He is chairman of the Pat Bishop Foundation and a steelpan music enthusiast.