Election day, Trinidad

It turns out that 12pm was the perfect time to go and cast one’s vote at polling station 0136 (known as the Diego Martin Junior Secondary School when it’s not election day). A parking spot awaited me in the schoolyard, in the shade of a mango tree, and apart from a handful of voters and a number of my COP activist neighbours roving the dingy corridors and walkways in between shifts as polling agents, the place was deserted. After visiting a main classroom where an Elections and Boundaries Commission officer checked to make sure my name was on the list, I was directed to the room for voters with surnames beginning with L-Z, where where voters with and without ID cards were separated into lines demarcated by strips of red and green paper stuck on the floor.

A certified “without” (I deliberately misplaced my ID card some years ago, largely on account of the horrifying photo), I took the red line. Once there, I proffered my passport and the polling card I’d received in the mail. The officer consulted the electoral list and drew a red line through my name, then rifled through a massive ledger and found a blue card with my registration info and a copy of the dreadful photo (now thankfully faded) from my lost ID card stuck to it. (I hope a copy of information in this ledger is stored on a computer somewhere.) Then the officer made me swear that I wasn’t lying about being unable to produce an ID card and that I hadn’t sold it, after which I had to sign a note confirming same. Then my name and consecutive number (198, for the record) were announced, mainly for the benefit of the two polling agents present (one of whom was probably COP and the other PNM–the UNC Alliance probably not bothering to waste further resources in this constituency), whose task is to try and figure out who I’m likely to be voting for.

Then I moved on to the voting officer, who signed and handed me my ballot paper and showed me how to fold it and to use the “X” stamp. Then I went behind a screen propped up on a school desk, considered briefly whether to inaugurate Jeremy’s proposed plan for proportional representation by putting a percentage instead of put an “X” next to the name of my candidate of choice, but decided on the “X” instead. Then I inserted my ballot through a slot into a padlocked metal box, dipped my finger into a pot of red ink, wiped off the excess, and left the room. So I’ve exercised my constitutional right, as the people like to say.

All morning the words to Bally’s “Party Time“, one of the undisputed hits of the 1986 election season, have been ringing in my head; belatedly, I know, as yesterday marked the end of the mindless and particularly Trinidadian brand of campaigning that Bally parodies in his calypso and which seems to have been taken to unprecedented heights this year. And of course I’m remembering 1986, the first and only time I ever felt deeply involved in an election campaign, not to mention hopeful about the outcome. That year my neighbourhood threw their support, predictably, behind the NAR, and I, not long back from university abroad, joined in. I spent most of that election day either at the polling station (I was a polling agent) or at the house up the street which had been designated NAR activist headquarters, getting high on the buzz.

The NAR won 33 out of 36 seats, of course, and swept into power on a tremendous tide of goodwill. Who knew then that, a mere three and a half years later, I’d be sitting in traffic on a highway in northern California (having left Trinidad only five days earlier) and hear an announcement over National Public Radio about a coup in Trinidad and Tobago. A journalist friend of mine says that when she hears the calypso “Vote Dem Out”, the campaign song that rocked the worlds of NAR supporters in 1986, chills still run up her spine–though not for quite the same reasons they did in 1986.

I envy my COP activist neighbours, some of whom were key figures in the NAR frenzy of 21 years ago, their commitment and passion and the sense of hope they’ve clearly been able to muster about the outcome of this year’s election. But try as I might, I can’t share in it.

Tonight I’ll be getting together with a few friends here at home to watch the election results. We’ll order some food, and Jonty is poised to grab a few bottles of wine once the polls close and the prohibition against the sale of alcohol during polling time is lifted. Nikipedia says he may blog, but we (or rather I) have warned him that relatively sociability is one of the requirements for being a part of this lime. We probably won’t make it a very late night. J9 has to be up early for a shoot tomorrow, and in any case we’ll probably all drink more than we should. Then wake up tomorrow and face the music.

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