How should the People’s Partnership (PP) and the People’s National Movement (PNM) position themselves for the 26th July vote? Just to remind you the last time around the PNM choose the “stability” platform. We’ve delivered for the last 50 years so you can trust us to keep delivering. The PP chose to position themselves as the saviours from the evils of poor management, arrogance, corruption and squander mania. So with PP “we would rise” when you let us fix the mess.
What position should the two parties pursue this time around? If I were advising the PNM I would tell them to flaunt their newly minted underdog status. They could adopt the stance of “we’ve made some mistakes, we know that and we’ve also done a world of good and want to continue doing so”. So don’t throw away the baby with the bath water. A sub-message could be that you should not put all your eggs in one basket.
The PP boys and girls should stay on their “servants of the people platform” tweaking their message to local government issues. Both parties need to be real and go easy on the platitudes and empty rhetoric. Mankind just want to know when the bridge fixin’. As the incumbent central government, the PP has a distinct advantage. However, they will have to be careful not to be seen as bullies (given their big majority), so Jack should not be talkin’ about winning everything. That will only make the PNM more attractive to their faithful and to others concerned about making sure there is someone there to guard the guards.
