Old School Politics: A Recipe For Disaster

Two days ago, the people of Trinidad & Tobago voted out the incumbent Government, the People’s National Movement. The then opposition, the United National Congress, won 26 seats, the PNM 13 and the Tobago’s People Party got the only two seats on the Sister Isle.

At the time of writing this piece (April 30), the General Election had ended two days prior.  We monitored the campaigns of the two major political parties - PNM and UNC - from the day former Prime Minister, Stuart Young, announced the snap election date on March 17. Our interest in this national election was chiefly because of the utterances coming from people, mainly youth, on the ground.  The word was that the ruling PNM was destined to lose, and lose badly.  

During our media monitoring, we were convinced that the PNM was not going to win this election.  Why?  It was quite evident that the ruling party relied on antiquated politics to succeed. Such old-fashioned methods included but were not limited to paving roads, increased water supply and sudden financial releases.  These strategies have been tried and tested, but this time, they failed - the voting population sent a very clear message that they will not be fooled by these old-school methods.  

From a communication standpoint, the eventual winner, the UNC, outshone the PNM by leaps and bounds.  It fact, the UNC’s Public Relations campaign was almost flawless for many reasons - they stuck to their campaign theme song (When UNC Wins, Everybody Wins), the messaging was consistent and well delivered via the use of split-screens, and the saturation of  mainstream and social media was very evident from very early in their campaign trail.

On the other hand, although it was the PNM who called the election, the then Government seemed to have no answers for the UNC’s very tactical and strategic approach to the onslaught.  It caused the PNM to be more reactive than proactive. .Moreover, the PNM changed its theme song on several occasions; this method usually confuses audiences and sends mixed messages.   During the very short campaign, the PNM had approximately several theme songs including “All In”, A New Chapter and “Red, Ready and Responsible”.  Remember the UNC stuck with one theme song throughout the campaign.  Kudos to the UNC and new Prime Minister, Mrs. Kamla Persad-Bissessar, for this focused approach.

Additionally, we will not write all of our observations regarding the PNM’s communication strategies; however, we must mention the voice overs for some of their advertisements, particularly one which ended with a lady’s voice saying AGAIN...meaning reject the UNC again.  The entire ad was not very appealing and sounded very rough and could not really be taken seriously from a growing and educated voting population. 

From the Management of Majic Touch Events & Communications Services, we end by saying the best strategic political party won. In this case, the best party was the UNC.  Congratulations to the new Prime Minister and her team on a well-executed election campaign.

#PNM #UNC #OldSchoolPolitics #CommunicationStrategies #KamlaPersadBissessar