A plague on them all

Get out and vote on Monday, people cry. Assert your freedom, do your duty, make a choice, stand up for what you believe. Don't waste your vote. Abstinence is apathy: it signifies acceptance of the status quo.

Baloney.

The three main political parties in Trinidad and Tobago are pragmatic mainstream parties separated only by personalities. They offer no serious ideological choice, no serious difference of policy. Apart from the fanatics who jostle around political organisations like flies around dung, people will vote for the party which seems to represent the least of three evils.

And what use is a vote of that sort? It will be construed as a passionate expression of support for one party or another. It will count for the same as the vote of the most crazed party fanatic. No one will ever know whether your vote was one of resignation or of conviction. Both carry exactly the same weight.

Worse still, the voting process offers no way of expressing dissent or disapproval. You can be totally fed up with the ruling party, totally pessimistic about the opposition, sceptical about whether the third, newest party has even a remote chance of winning a seat. But once you cast your vote, you are saying "I support this party 100 per cent." It's all or nothing. No room for a vote of defiance, or disagreement, criticism, anger or frustration.

It would be interesting if we could each go to the polls with, say, ten votes to allocate among the parties. You might give five to one party, two to another, and the rest of your votes to a new option called "None of the above" or "A pox on the lot of them." The result would be quite different from a conventional election result.

So what does that say about the legitimacy of conventional voting?