With the Gen­er­al Elec­tion just three weeks away, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj has dubbed this sea­son as the most his­toric, with 17 po­lit­i­cal par­ties and 161 can­di­dates rac­ing to the fin­ish line.

How­ev­er, Ram­samooj be­lieves that some of the more pop­u­lar po­lit­i­cal lead­ers are still falling short in their na­tion­al cam­paigns, which can ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Ram­samooj re­ferred to the 1976 gen­er­al elec­tion that al­so fea­tured nu­mer­ous par­ties. “All of these 17-odd com­pet­ing po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties would prob­a­bly re­sult in the PNM ben­e­fit­ting, de­pend­ing sole­ly on which con­stituen­cies we have mul­ti­ple par­ties, be­sides the tra­di­tion­al par­ties run­ning,” Ram­samooj said.

“If you look at St Joseph con­stituen­cy and if you look at per­haps Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituen­cy, if you have a split op­po­si­tion, whether big or small, then you have ben­e­fits to the PNM.” Aside from this, Ram­samooj said there are var­i­ous is­sues that po­lit­i­cal par­ties and their lead­ers should con­sid­er over the next few weeks.