NACTA: PNM SWEEP LIKELY
A recent poll conducted by the North American Caribbean Teachers Association (NACTA) which has shown the People’s National Movement as appearing set to win Monday’s Tobago House of Assembly (THA) elections, with the possibility of a clean sweep, must make uncomfortable reading to the hierarchy of the Opposition Democratic Action Congress (DAC). Should NACTA, which has a ten-year history of being on target in this country’s elections, be correct again it will prove politically embarrassing to persons who jumped ship from the ruling People’s National Movement and the Opposition National Alliance for Reconstruction to the DAC. In turn, the findings of the NACTA poll have seen DAC leader and former Chief Secretary of the THA, Hochoy Charles, as fighting for his political survival.
The more than 450 persons interviewed while the poll was conducted have indicated that the PNM was leading the DAC by a margin of 51 to 41 percent, with the NAR and the four Independents having less than two percent of the vote and with four percent of the voters undecided. Should the NACTA findings prove correct and Monday’s election for control of the Assembly see the PNM not simply victorious but winning if not all, but by a comfortable majority, an Opposition political vacuum will be created. For, in an incredibly confusing move the official Opposition, the National Alliance for Reconstruction, which controlled four of the eight seats in the dissolved Tobago House of Assembly, opted to contest only two of the 12 seats. It was a strategy, if it can be so-called, almost unheard of in the history of Trinidad and Tobago electoral politics.
The awkward decision appeared both to have been a signal that the NAR was of the view that it was unable to retake the four seats it held in the dissolved THA as well as a message to the DAC that should that party win or need two additional seats to form the Government it would be willing to go along. In addition, equally awkward had been the announcement by the then Chairman of the NAR, Cecil Caruth, that he was supporting the Democratic Action Congress. Admittedly, he was dismissed later from the NAR post, but the psychological damage through the creating of confusion, however inadvertently, in the minds of the Tobago electorate had already been done.
If the NAR’s fielding of a mere two candidates was a signal that it did not believe it could have retaken all four seats it had held, then Caruth’s move sent the added signal that his view was that the NAR would be unable to win even a single seat! Had the NAR fielded candidates for either all or a majority of the seats it may have retained a measure of credibility. With the NAR’s somewhat shafting of its own credibility, all that was left in serious Opposition to the PNM in the battle for control of the THA was the DAC with its romanticised attempt to relive its glory days before its voluntary dissolution in the mid-1980s to become, first a part of the Alliance for Progress, and later a unit of the National Alliance for Reconstruction.
The revived Democratic Action Congress, which was seen as leading in the race for three of the 12 THA seats, has been viewed by the NACTA poll as possibly being nipped at the tapes by the PNM. The three seats, the NACTA findings pointed out, “in which the DAC is leading are within the margin of error.” Meanwhile, although NACTA has something of a record of having been right in all of the national and Local Government elections held in Trinidad and Tobago since 1995, nonetheless, the findings of some of the most scientifically conducted polls have been confounded by voters.
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"NACTA: PNM SWEEP LIKELY"