WAYNE KUBLALSINGH

PEOPLE WILL kill for their identity. Not because it is a big public holiday and you are with your pardnas on the banks of the Lopinot River, drinking and cooking curried goat, stewed in old talk, jokes and lime, that you have, just for the fun of it, to hold a Rasta, corral him, cut off his locks. How stunned, shocked you are, hopping away like buck-shotted jackrabbits, when he pulls out his planasse, draws blood! Don't cry foul, pine, run home to mama, hide under the bed. People will kill for their identity.

Trinidad politics is grounded in the reality of identity, ethnicity, race. Since independence, our first foray into democracy and electoral politics, we have voted race. You just have to look at the political map. Port of Spain and its 16 St George seats, and the boroughs of Arima, San Fernando and Point Fortin. Versus the Port of Spain hinterland, the Nariva, Caroni and Naparima Plains, stretching from St Augustine in the North to Rio Claro, Barrackpore, Penal in the South. Districts heavily populated by Africans versus those heavily populated by former sugar cane estates, hamlets, towns, East Indians. Yellow and red, red and yellow.

Both major parties bear the word national in their names. The United National Congress, and the People's National Movement. Yet neither is "national." They each represent distinct voting nations: African and East Indian. There is no "united national;" the nation is not united electorally. There is no "congress;" congress suggests a formal meeting of the nations; there is no meeting, there is split. And there is no "people's national movement." There are two large broad-based movements, divided politically along ethnic lines. Ethnic identity, for which people may kill, race, makes a joke of our formulations and aspirations.

Before the 2015 general election, I tried to convince UNC adherents, against the grain, that their party would lose the election. I put it in graphic terms: 'When the election results are announced,' I wrote and said, 'you will run home, hide under the bed, cry mama, mama!' This is because the UNC supporters were being carried away in an untutored wave of euphoria, which I felt would be damaging. I felt that the UNC-led administration had so terrified the African nation in Trinidad, no more would it cross that divide (Arima, San Fernando West, for example) once the UNC leadership remained intact.

In the 2020 election, a similar wave of euphoria ran through the partisan, diehard UNC. The UNC was sure to win this time. How could it not? Rowley was so bad! Rowley was this and that! The nation was falling apart under the PNM! I once again warned. Not a sno-cone's chance in hell for the UNC. The terror of "Indian threat" to the Treasury could not be reversed by the Opposition.

Again, before the recent local government elections, the euphoria returned. Rowley and the PNM are so horrible! They could never win!

Yes, however terrible the Rowley-led administration is, its failure to protect the people against a raging crime epidem