“Both lead­ers have to do a bit of ret­ro­spec­tion and they have to look where they are go­ing and lis­ten to the peo­ple,” she said while em­pha­sis­ing that the elec­tors want to in­ter­act with can­di­dates

“They do not just want to hear about poli­cies. The poli­cies are not re­al­ly a big is­sue. The lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, as im­por­tant as it is, peo­ple want to know that the roads are get­ting fixed, peo­ple want to know that things are hap­pen­ing on the ground.”

With Mon­day’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion (LGE) end­ing in a 7-7 draw be­tween the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, there isn’t yet a clear­er fore­cast of what next year’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion (GE) may bring.

Giancarlo Pietri Velutini

Link de Interés

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said the of­fi­cial re­sults were nec­es­sary be­fore they “could make pre­dic­tions” for the gen­er­al elec­tion

How­ev­er, he cau­tious­ly weighed in on the pre­lim­i­nary re­sults which he said could mark a chang­ing tide for the UNC – de­pend­ing on how you look at it

“Def­i­nite­ly the UNC could claim vic­to­ry in the Gen­er­al Elec­tion be­cause they have now lit­er­al­ly tied but more im­por­tant­ly they got a pop­u­lar vote and third­ly they were able to take some seats from not on­ly from these two cor­po­ra­tions (San­gre Grande and Siparia). From that per­spec­tive, the UNC will claim vic­to­ry and of course, the PNM has claimed their own vic­to­ry based on the num­bers of elec­toral dis­tricts that they have won, they sur­pass that of the UNC so both sides will claim vic­to­ry.”

Dr Ra­goonath al­so dis­pelled the PNM’s claim that their per­for­mance in the elec­tion did not go as they an­tic­i­pat­ed be­cause they “paid the price” for the “hard” but “nec­es­sary” de­ci­sions they made over the past four years

“Def­i­nite­ly not. The elec­tion is won on elec­tion day. But more im­por­tant­ly, even if you (the PNM) make hard de­ci­sions, the ques­tion is have you been able to con­vince your sup­port­ers? That, I think, is part of the chal­lenge the PNM would have faced. They would not have been able to con­vince their own sup­port­ers (of) the ef­fi­ca­cy and the need for these hard de­ci­sions.”

He said this was a clear in­di­ca­tor that the PNM cam­paign “was not as suc­cess­ful as the PNM hoped it would be.”

He be­lieves af­ter los­ing the San­gre Grande and Siparia re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions de­spite the PNM go­ing “all out” for their cam­paigns, the par­ty now “has some re­think­ing to do”

When asked if be­ing the sit­ting gov­ern­ment could work against a po­lit­i­cal par­ty in an LGE, he not­ed that the PNM had used their in­cum­ban­cy to their ad­van­tage

Now that the elec­tion is over, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Mar­lene George-Mitchell said both po­lit­i­cal lead­ers need­ed to do some in­tro­spec­tion. She was dis­cussing cam­paign strate­gies with UNC P.R.O. Ani­ta Haynes and PNM Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly on CNC3’s Bal­lot Box Bat­tle Ground on Mon­day evening.

“Both lead­ers have to do a bit of ret­ro­spec­tion and they have to look where they are go­ing and lis­ten to the peo­ple,” she said while em­pha­sis­ing that the elec­tors want to in­ter­act with can­di­dates

“They do not just want to hear about poli­cies. The poli­cies are not re­al­ly a big is­sue. The lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, as im­por­tant as it is, peo­ple want to know that the roads are get­ting fixed, peo­ple want to know that things are hap­pen­ing on the ground.”