Greater dangers to our democracy | Columnist

I investigated the surprise announcement that the People’s National Movement (PNM) convention and internal elections, scheduled for November 17, had been canceled, and the further announcement, which quickly, but ambiguously, reversed the cancellation decision. My view remains that any apparent suppression of democracy within the PNM is a matter of public interest.

There are of course strident PNM voices saying: “Stay out of PNM business”. Interestingly, however, Minister Camille Robinson-Regis, MP, a senior party figure, in the course of attempting to assuage the embarrassment of the two announcements, admitted that “the PNM is of great importance to Trinidad and Tobago and therefore ((to quoting the famous CLR James again), the internal life of the party cannot be separated from its public responsibilities.” (See Express of Friday, October 25, 2024, “In Defense of PNM Democracy.”)

I hope the rest of the PNM hierarchy “gets the memo” that current events within the PNM are not just PNM business. Here’s another memo: commenting on the relationship between the supposedly canceled PNM convention and internal elections and the obvious leadership struggle to succeed the current Prime Minister as political leader of the PNM – a Pandora’s box that he himself has opened – won’t go away. Expressions of anger in denouncing those who comment on the state of “the internal life” of the PNM are futile.

I have already put forward one reason why democracy in the PNM is important: namely that some of the PNM’s current atrocious ministerial failures must face the democratic reckoning of the PNM membership. Not surprisingly, National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds reportedly got a taste of rejection last week. Minister Robinson-Regis described the decision to cancel the convention as “a strategic decision”. For whose benefit is it strategic – the horrific failures?

I emphasize once again that the PNM must, in the public interest, offer several new candidates, especially as our choices as an electorate are likely to be limited by the ruthless and past rejections of the tenacious leadership of the now openly split Opposition United. National Congress (UNC).

There is currently speculation that a likely outcome of the cumulative effect of the split UNC’s self-inflicted circumstances is that it could lose some of the seats the party currently holds and the PNM would lose a three-fifths majority of could obtain the 41 seats. are contested (a victory by a special majority of votes).

There are conditions attached to this speculation. Can the PNM retain the two Tobago seats in the national House of Representatives after it was defeated in the last Tobago House of Representatives elections?

Another condition is whether the PNM will be harmed if regular supporters stay home out of disgust at the deplorable public security situation, for which the PNM leadership has resolutely refused to take any responsibility and responded to the terrified public with condescension, insult and lack of anger . management.

Will a default vote phenomenon negatively impact the PNM and mitigate the effects of the current lack of palatable opposition, which could otherwise lead to the PNM achieving a special majority victory?

The danger of special or supermajority victories in national elections is currently a dominant theme among political commentators, as the late President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in particular was able to become a constitutional dictator and establish a status characteristic of that presidency and the current state. Prime Minister of Hungary (since 2013), Viktor Orbán, succeeded in turning Hungary into “an electoral autocracy”.

Chavez and Orban each had enough votes to cross supermajority thresholds and override other constitutional checks and balance mechanisms. See “The Constitutional Path to Dictatorship in Venezuela” – Diego A Zambrano, March 20, 2019, Stanford University Law School; and “The Game Theory of Democracy” – Amanda Taub, The New York Times, October 29, 2024, citing the work of Adam Przeworski, Polish-born political scientist, now professor emeritus of politics at New York University.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s ruling party last week used its supermajority in Congress to pass a law banning legal challenges to constitutional changes.

Is this where we will end up as a result of the UNC’s stagnation and the PNM’s closed-door maneuvers?

—Martin Daly