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Predicting elections is a fool’s errand, as difficult and unpredictable as trying to time the movement of financial markets or pronouncing on what the weather will be like six months from now.
But let me play the half-fool by reducing the odds of being wrong. I do so by offering two dates for the next election: November 2014 and November 2015.
I choose November 2014 because the last election was held four years ago this December and I don’t think the Prime Minister will want to disrupt another Christmas season, especially given how close the outcome was in 2010 as well as the high probability that the airport will be not much further along by then than it is today. Why risk defeat so late in the year on a broken promise to “substantially” complete the airport this year when the project is still so far from being finished and has been delayed so often when there is still over a year left to govern?
October will soon be here, not all his candidates are in place, the airport is proceeding at a snail’s pace, and Dr. Gonsalves seems somewhat back on his heels because of complaints about: larceny at the Courthouse and various other government ministries; the silliness of slavery reparations efforts; high unemployment among secondary-school graduates (victims of the so-called “education revolution”); urban congestion, decay, and neglect in Kingstown; a high and growing crime rate; widespread highway disrepair; inadequate natural disaster mitigation efforts; substandard medical and hospital care; and skyrocketing borrowing and debt.
On the other hand, what if recent internal polling results by CADRES, the Barbados-based polling firm, continue to predict that the ULP will win at least eight seats and possibly 12 in the next election, as they supposedly showed this time last year? My contention is that if these results still held, an election would have already been called. After all, the government has been in power for nearly four years, long enough to warrant a fresh mandate to rule. My guess is that the results are not in the ULPs favour or are too close to call, a situation that precludes throwing caution to the wind.
Next, I choose November 2015 because a December 2015 election, the very last moment of the mandate, will look like a man clinging desperately to power as he stares down at his inevitable defeat.
And of the months before November 2015? I rule them out only because I am convinced that the airport will still be far from complete — let alone able to accept flights — by the end of October 2015. As the months of the New Year pass with the New Jerusalem still a long way off, the ULP’s prospects for re-election will also begin to slip away. You don’t call an election when you are going downhill.
Let me be very clear: I am among those refusenicks (or “Internet crazies” as the PMs calls us) who never for one minute believed that the conception and construction of Argyle International Airport (AIA) was anything more than a very clever ruse to maintain political power from one election to another. It was the very construction of the airport — not its completion, not its operation, not its economic spin-offs — that was an end in itself. This is a “political airport,” nothing more, nothing less. It is this simple fact that explains why there was no feasibility study, no proper financing or budgeting, no large work force using lots of labour-saving equipment, no on-going cost-benefit analysis, no independent oversight, no concern about missed deadlines, and no study of the alternate uses that could have been made of the monies raised.
None of these and other essential prerequisites for a “real” airport were needed because the AIA has always been an economic mirage meant to draw our gullible people to the polling booth via a New Jerusalem by the sea. A more brilliant Machiavellian masterstroke the Caribbean political world has never seen!
Building an airport in slow motion for maximum political gain is beginning to backfire as the patience of the people is beginning to strain and as the barbs of informed critics keep striking with growing accuracy and ferocity. As the months pass, this grass-roots impatience and informed scepticism will continue to grow.
The more completion is delayed, the longer the gap between completion and operation, the greater the cost overruns, the more conspicuous the absence of major airlines willing to service the airport, the higher the public confusion or outright doubt, the more intense the scrutiny of real experts, and the less money available for more credible and worthwhile projects, the less the esteem and credibility of the Prime Minister and his government.
Then a Rubicon is crossed — as it has been crossed by countless leaders all over the world — and all that is left is a jealous and paranoid clinging to power as the day of political reckoning quickly approaches.
But there is yet hope for a ULP victory in November (2014/2015). It turns out that the best friend of the governing party is its supposedly worst enemy, the NDP.
Led by a dour and ineffectual man, riddled with internal dissension, plagued by lacklustre candidates, lacking concrete and detailed classical liberal solutions to our growing economic woes, terrified of criticising the man-made mirage at Argyle, the NDP is a weak alternative to the current regime. Above all, ordinary Vincentians want their politics served with a little pepper sauce. Mr. Eustace has none to offer them.
Absent these deficiencies, the Gonsalves-led government would have been rejected in 2010. Their on-going presence means that the Comrade, a superb sophist and brilliant political campaigner if there ever was one, has a better than even chance of retaining power even as his mirage at Argyle slowly fades from view.
This is why I predict an election in either November 2014 or November 2015.
C. ben-David
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Very fine effort and stellar production, C. ben-David.
I believe that the General Elections WILL NOT occur before December 2014 as COM-RED Ralphie HAS TO ALLOW the NDP boys to complete the nine years so that they can collect big fat WICKED ‘pension and gratuity’. Otherwise he will have a rebellion on his hands.
The political copycat contemptuously discarded RM CATO’s SVLP Independence date of October 27, BUT may still yet favour the Russian “great communist OCTOBER REVOLUTION” in OCTOBER 2015.
MARCH seemed to work with him the first time out, so he might yet opt for MARCH 2015. That is his newer communistic ‘radical’ date which he favours. And he may want to forestall the MASSIVE REJECTION AND DISAPPROVAL OF HIS INCREASINGLY LENINIST REGIME by having the national poll even a full year ahead of the mandated date, or slightly near to that – – – DECEMBER 2014, MARCH 2015, OR near CARNIVAL SEASON 2015.
The advisers fear going the full term on account ot their certainly of total defeat at the ballot box.
So, he is in a quandary, keeping an eye on these various ‘strategic’ dates, while frantically attempting to out the widespread political fires and embarrassments – – – missing monies at the Registry, Corruption Skulduggery at the NYC office, increasing frequency of illogical blow-outs or melt-downs by the budding Despot, restiveness in the ‘leadership’ at repeated, shameless nepotism …
The communistic one will be on pins and needles, seeking to out these floods of political fires – – – all the while keeping his eye and ears attuned to finally deciding on which of these dates would work the political obeah for him to illegitimately mount the seat of government once again. No body misses the limelight of publicity and power MORE THAN a former Boxer OR a forsaken, rejected pol – – – notice his like rejected newly found political fellow traveller in political undermining — i.e., Mitchy.
Any date will do anyhow – – – Vincentians are stridently chorusing that THE SOONER THE BETTER.
Such a deafening crescendo from so many Vincentian nationals volubly voicing that THEY WANT TO SEE THE BACK OF THIS POLITICAL FRAUD AND IDEOLOGICAL CHARLATAN.
A masterful presentation SON OF DAVID.
Mr. Ben-David,
Would you be utilizing the “POLITICAL AIRPORT” after its completion (long over-due)?
Why, becuase everyone in SVg that voted YES for the attempted referandum no longer earns, accepts or spends money with the Queen’s face on it ?
Of course David will use the airport, the sooner people like the shadow behind OK THEN understands that it is every Vincentian and their families for the next hundred years that will be paying for this folly, why shouldn’t they use it. Because David points to some truths which annoy the Unity Marxist Party [ULP], that doesn’t exclude him from useing something he has helped pay for.
Plus if Arnos Vale airport no longer exists, what do you expect him to do swim.
An airport is something we need, its the procedure used to obtain such, and the diabolical lies that we were fed, and the bankrupting of SVG what everyone objects to, even you ‘OK THEN’ with your less than half a brain should agree with that.
DAVID I think that anyone as leader will be an improvement to the Marxist scum that leads us at the moment.
We need a break and a change to ensure proper investigations can take place regarding accusations of wrong doing, and we can send a few worthless dirty dogs to prison.
We need to ensure that everyone accused of rape gets a day in court, regardless of how old the case’s are. Its the only way of exposing the truth and methods used in luring women into the rapist’s lair. Serial rapists if convicted should get serial prison terms and all their property consficated from them. They should then face prison for life. We must show no mercy as the women were shown no mercy.