Trinidad and Tobago voted for change, not for gender

Trinidad and Tobago elected its first female prime minister on Monday. Kamla Persad-Bissessar took a multiparty coalition to victory over the People's National Movement (PNM) and its leader, Patrick Manning, who had been in power for 13 of the last 17 years.

During this campaign, Persad-Bissessar's gender was used by the opposition to appeal to deepseated but, hopefully, bygone fears. Manning repeatedly painted Persad-Bissessar as a pawn in the hands of strong and dangerous men and suggested that "the lady" was not strong enough to rule. Persad-Bissessar, by contrast, bravely appeared on her campaign platforms to the tune of Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" and made many references to her roles as a mother and grandmother.

Capitalising on his strong following among citizens of African descent, Manning also sought to stir up intercommunal apprehensions by suggesting that Persad-Bissessar would seek to harm the interests of African-Trinidadians should she be elected.

And she will, because she is the leader of a leftist coalition.

Manning and PNM are conservative, and have brought industry to the island over the last decade. Why they didn't keep him prime minister is beyond me.

The people of the Caribbean can't figure out why their lives are depressing. The answer is on the ballot they bubbled in.

“...Manning and PNM are conservative...” BS! I lived there under Manning, Panday and Manning again. Both are crooks, Manning being a little smoother but he and the PNM are NOT in any way Conservative! Manning is a friend of Fidel CASTRO!

The PNM is Afro-Trinidadian. The UNC is East Indian based. Almost every government employee is PNM. Most business owners and regular working people are UNC.

He is JUST LIKE OBAMA!

http://guardian.co.tt/commentary/columnist/2010/05/26/decline-and-fall-patrick-manning

“...There were two essential failings which precipitated the decline and fall of Patrick Manning: an inflated ego that grew with “success” based on the economic rents drawn on the energy sector, rents that he felt he had gifted to the nation based on the fact that the decisions to monetise and commercialise the natural gas industry in its modern incarnation were taken under his governments. The second resulted from the first: he being so blinded by his own political advance, his emperorship, that he was unable to discern that the political culture was changing on him. So dazzled was he by his own bright light that he could not see that large segments of the population were no longer willing to leave it to the Government and most of all to the Prime Minister to determine what they should accept and how they should interact with the Government. Manning had become so enthralled by his own eminence that he adopted the habit of referring to himself in the third person as the “Prime Minister.”...”

Sorry about that. Apparently Wikipedia has flipped the ideologies completely backwards.

PNM Wikipedia Article
UNC Wikipedia Article

I take back my original comment.

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