By Raffique Shah
April 26, 2025
In the histories of nations such as our Trinidad and Tobago, there are times when challenges that seem insurmountable are thrown in our pathways. In such grim situations when the fabric of a nation is subjected to competing forces, warring tribes or, worse, battling gangs, the outlook is bleak. Negative forces that lay just below the surface crawl out of their caverns in their bid to capitalise on our misfortune. The general election that takes place tomorrow is one such volatile event that threatens a war for the soul of our nation.
Events have conspired to place us on the global stage of terrorism by ruling elites who see only their self-interests. They know how dangerous a path they are treading, but that is of little concern to them. If they need to rip this country by severing its arteries and organs, they will do so once it puts them in power to pursue their warped interests.
The biggest global event that put us centre-stage in what seems to be the early rumblings of World War III. In 1939 there were Adolf Hitler and Mussolini, as well as Stalin and master-coloniser Winston Churchill.
Twenty-five years earlier to kick off the first World War there were zealots such as The Royal families of Europe, The Emperor of Japan and such misfits parading as “Statesmen”. Since the 1950s the Western world has waited and watched out for the Messiah who will lead us not into temptation, but simply drag us by the ears and shove us into wars they will convince us are our battles. Enter Donald Trump, a man who was bad news before he was born. Other than being a boastful billionaire, he will sooner plunge the world into wars with instant ending.
One night last week I chose to attend, via television, a PNM meeting. I’d have to hope that television coverage is of the quality that can keep home-bound older folks like me reasonably well informed. I am quite satisfied with the level of coverage the 2025 election campaign has enjoyed. And, since I watch UNC and PNM meetings, I get balanced coverage that I can choose what I am looking for or listening to.
That night Prime Minister Young seemed to have been returning from daytime walkabouts in several constituencies in that quadrant of the country.
He seemed to be speaking off notes, as he normally does. He had fine-tuned his point-by-point presentation that should satisfy anyone who wanted to know how a Young government would steer us such that while we take several hits by way of lower revenues and higher expenditures, nothing will be insurmountable for the nation.
I had listened to the new PM on previous occasions, he was always forceful with well structured information and arguments. In my not-so-humble opinion, Young has transformed himself into an orator, a Chancellor, a lecturer, and a leader, all in short order.
About half-way through his speech my youngest brother, Feroze, came and joined my audience of one. He sat there, seemingly riveted, as Young unfolded his “New Chapter” for the PNM. I told Feroze that I had never heard Young speak so fluently, explain every point he wished his audience to understand and convey to others: “Stuarty”, the darling of the PNM frontliners, had metamorphised, and by their reactions to his every word, PNMites have crowned their new King.
I told my brother that I didn’t see how anyone with an iota of sense and a milligramme of brain could have just listened to Stuart’s speech and not understood what he said, what his programme for change will be when he gets into office. But I hasten to add that after 80 million Americans actually voted for Trump, one can expect anything from electors.
Few people at these open-air mass meetings understand what they heard, many of them may have actually slept through.
Of those who understand that they had just listened to a masterful speech, maybe the best in the campaign—they will say, “Boy, I can’t vote for that party.”
For whatever reason, be it ancestral ties or race, or…what?, What do they want? The man refuted every charge the UNC has levelled at him. A little known fact that is trying to gain currency is this: no PNM minister or senior government official in the last ten years has been accused of corruption.
The party boasts of having completed hundreds of infrastructural projects, they take credit for handling Covid as smoothly as they did and they managed the country’s economy reasonably well given the circumstances that prevailed during their tenure.
On paper they should be a shoo-in for a third term, but with the electorate likely to exhibit American-like stupidity that saw Trump wreaking havoc inside and outside of America, the PNM may find itself estranged. Its motto could be “Killed by Success”.