United National Congress

They say a week is a long time in politics.  A week ago, I thought the main news item that would've occupied the front-burner would've been the Guardian's reporting of a top government official being fingered in an alleged conspiracy to wilfully pervert the course of public justice in relation to charges against two former People’s National Movement ministers.  Or the criticisms of Hon.

The local government manifestos released by the various parties for the elections on 26 Jul 2010 may be found below:

I've just witnessed T&T's first national political debate prior to an election, televised live on CNMG's C TV (find the recorded video here).  Here are my initial views.

Since the election, I've been glad to hear the dolting adoration of the new government fall away into critical thought regarding how Trinidad and Tobago governs itself. That the new Opposition Leader, Dr. Keith Rowley singled out Jack Warner regarding a possible conflict of interest has created friction within the social networks around me.

NOTE: The T&T Elections & Boundaries Commission (EBC) did not publish detailed results by party by constituency via its website at the time I wrote this.  As a result, I had to rely on unverified figures from third-party websites that claimed to have obtained them from the EBC.  The 2007 results were preliminary figures released on 05 Nov 2007 and the 2010 results were preliminary figure

The local media will be filled with things about this election. The winners and losers will point at each other for some of the thuggery that took place, there will be plenty of rhetoric from both sides and there will be investigations - I'm sure - into corruption charges of the last regime. How do I know all of this? My friends, we've seen all of that before. It's the soap opera of regime change.

I started picking through the manifestos - both here and here. And when I started, I fully intended to complete a good fact check on each manifesto. To some degree, I have - and honestly, after a few days of staring at the 'contents' of each manifesto... I'm somewhat disgusted. So I stopped.

Disclaimer: To be clear, I will be expressing opinions on the PNM manifesto as well. And since I am not voting in this General Election and have been irked by both sides, I am being as fair as possible.

In reading both manifestos for the General Election 2010 here in Trinidad and Tobago, I've decided to change the way that I'm going through them. The majority of both manifestos is rhetoric and promises, much of which can't be proven or disproven. That is politics - but it isn't necessarily democracy.

First, we had the dousing of a PNM candidate with red paint and the threat on Kamla Persad-Bissessar's life.

Finally, with the People's Partnership Manifesto out, we can stand both manifestos side by side.

The People's Partnership Manifesto is available here (3 megabytes)- it was just released today.

The People's National Movement Manifesto is available here (20 megabytes). It was released earlier this week.