Are Trinbagonians for or against?

I was doing some house-cleaning of my facebook profile - getting rid of groups and apps that weren't needed - and discovered something funnycurious (as they say in T&T - yes, foreigner, it means strange).  The number of members of the COP, PNM and UNC groups on facebook - 3,400, 2,900 & 880 respectively - is way less, even in total, than the 11,500 folks who joined the group 2 million against $2million flag!! In other words, more folks behooved themselves to click on the Join button for a group against our Hon. Sports Minister's over-compensating 'legacy flag' than for all three political parties combined.  I had to ask myself: are we Trinis more likely to be *against* something than *for* the opposite?

If the answer to this is yes - we're more likely to be against something - then that places some of our behaviours in interesting light.

When the West Indies cricket team plays against Australia, we aren't backing our boys - we really bad-minding Australia.  When folks became fans of Keith Rowley on facebook in recent days, it wasn't because they supported what he stands for - it's more to register their hatred for what he stood against.

All these years when our social-scientists presumed we voted along racial lines, it wasn't because we supported our own - it's more that we feared those who weren't.  It surely couldn't be because every single voter read the parties' manifestoes from cover to cover and made a deliberate decision to support the policies of the party they voted for.  Heck, I'd be surprised if most of the voters even knew who their party's representative for the area was - they just went in and looked for the party's symbol to place their X.

So, in keeping with this thinking, I have a suggestion to the Coalition Committee of the COP/UNC.  Be the first to blaze a new trail of transparency.  If UNC and COP were to merge, call the new party APNM - Anti-PNM.  You'd be sure to win by a landslide without bothering to campaign!