Just three more Sundays remain before we make our way to the polling stations to choose the next government of the republic of TT. This column always advocates the importance of exercising the right to have a say in who governs because it is the only meaningful political voice we have. It is a right we must not take for granted either.

Notwithstanding, it is not an easy call when the picture is quite confusing this time around for the large number of floating voters who are not party members or may have fallen out of love with their traditional political heartthrobs. The number of rag-tag new parties, the dismaying absence of published and well-circulated manifestos and with time almost running out to convince those with no tribal credentials, hearing a party's message in a fragmented social media environment is quite a challenge.

For traditional party loyalists who attend constituency events to soak up the buzzy atmosphere and listen to the baiting of opponents and all the clever repartee, it can be fun and is a good way to get a sense of the candidates and maybe glean their intentions. For the new parties, some of which have been described pretty fairly as 'pick-up sides,' their messages are not connecting and for the most part, their viability remains questionable. This is unfortunate since many thoughtful voters would like to consider a third main party, even if it is just to have another option.

We have the precedent of the relatively recent Congress of the People (COP) experiment which eventually failed. That was a concerted effort (with credible candidates, ideas for growth and solid funders) to break the two-party, race-based nature of TT politics. Attempts, going further back to the early labour-based parties and the NAR which, despite achieving an election win, failed to endure because of extreme internal and external crises and the lack of a long and strong party machine behind it.

For any of the new parties, getting even as far as COP did is not easy because the candidate receiving the largest number of votes in each electoral district wins. Unless a third party gains sufficient popularity to wipe out the PNM or UNC, which are evenly matched, it stands little chance of running the country. And that is unlikely to happen since popularity guarantees no seats in Parliament even if a party does well at the polls. There were once opposition calls for proportional representation but that has fallen by the wayside because it usually requires forming a coalition to govern, and those seldom last. The two-party system, one could argue, promotes governmental stability since a single party wins a majority in the parliament and governs.

So it will be business as usual in TT unless the predictions that the new electoral boundaries will make it a closely fought election and deliver no clear winner are correct. Truth be told, there is often not very much that divides the UNC and PNM, so it is possible for governmental control to alternate between them without huge shifts in policy, despite the rhetoric. The