The Deafening Silence of Trinidad and Tobago Blogs (Updated)

Update: I got an email from a blogger who had not been on the list, but now is - Justin has a great commentary that is very similar to what I wrote - and a little more strong in words.

Having had time to get some sleep after being rudely awakened at 3 a.m. by Carnival supporters of the PNM, I decided to cast about the Caribbean Blog List to see what the Trinidad and Tobago blogosphere had to say about this last election.

In summary, not one thing. Granted, many people wrote that they had voted and had outlined their own experiences - but no one really had comment on what the results of the election mean for the country.

The Allyuh Elections Liveblog gives a nice United National Congress Alliance (UNCA) bit of spin - including the mandatory "it is the COP's fault that we lost". Well, not really. It is the UNCA's fault if they lost any votes. If the UNCA wants to represent the people, this election was a bit of a sign that perhaps they don't represent as well as they thought... or more importantly, that they would like others to think.

In the spoof blogs, Basdeo Panday wakes up to find out he is not the Prime Minister and Patrick Manning seems to end his blog after complaining that Christine Sahadeo was trying to assure herself a cabinet post, a popular joke that Christine Sahadeo will probably never live down.

Its over, and barely a whimper in Trinidad and Tobago's citizen media.

For myself, I look at it as what I had expected. It was apparent that the mudslinging of the UNCA would hurt the Congress of the People, especially with the grassroots support that Basdeo Panday has. Why he has that support is anyone's guess, but there it is. He has it, but as he has learned he does not have the support that he has grown to expect in times when there were only two parties. Oops.

The PNM won by catering to the lowest common denominator. It did an outstanding job by doing so, and by showing people that it had a hand that it was reaching out with. That the same hand they are holding is the hand that holds them down does not seem to have crossed any minds, but that is immaterial. At the end of the day, the PNM won... but it did not do so with a popular vote. It did so strategically. Analytically. And for that, the PNM deserves respect - but that respect does not reflect on governance, but on winning the election.

The Opposition, again the UNCA under the leadership of Panday, is doomed to repeat the mistakes that it has made in the past. Crime will likely continue to increase with some plateaus. Cost of living will increase. Labor will continue to decrease as less people feel the need to work. The smelter will come, despite the fact that no one really wants it. The Constitution will be rewritten amidst great drama, but that drama is so boring that no one will pay much attention to it.

Maybe the COP will arise from the ashes. I am not certain. My read of the weblogs in Trinidad and Tobago has been that there has been a lot of citizen media support for a political party that is not UNCA or PNM - the amount of votes for COP bears that out. From what I saw, Dookeran wasn't playing the game by UNCA or PNM rules - and when he said that the country is not ready for the brand of politics that he was pushing with the COP, it seems apparent that he was right.

Perhaps a new party will form. Maybe. Maybe, in the future, a political party will be created that allows for issues instead of drama - one which actually works for the citizens instead of entertaining them. But people want to be entertained, and it seems that the price that they are willing to pay for that entertainment may be quite high.

I do not know. What I do know is that when I look around me, I do not see a country reaching its potential. I see a country resting on its laurels. Some have told me it was the same during the 1970s. My thought - if the country made it through the 1970s, it will make it through this.

And now, I shall not have to write about politics for quite some time.

I think the best closing I can find comes from borrowing some pre-election words from Nicholas Laughlin:

...Maybe we'll also finally grasp that it's our fault, not the politicians--they're just preying on our prejudices and political immaturity. Then the real work will begin.

Indeed.