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Kirk Meighoo
This is my response to Gab Souldeya Hosein’s request to give insights into the UNC’s 2025 campaign. It is about what I did as Public Relations Officer of the UNC.
EXPLAINING THE WINNING PR STRATEGY FOR THE UNC
Failure of Analysts
The 2025 elections resulted in one of the most unanticipated and extreme upsets in the history of Trinidad and Tobago. It was a political blowout that no major analyst or pollster predicted, not even on election night, and it calls the methods, assumptions and capabilities of the discipline into question (not for the first time).
In my view, this has much to do with the Port of Spain-centred media’s profound ignorance of the majority of Trinidadians who live “past the lighthouse”, their (at best) superficial interest in this majority, and their inability to treat this majority’s views as seriously and respectfully as they take those in Port of Spain.
Accordingly, they did not understand the power, impact and reach of the UNC’s election campaign, and could therefore not anticipate the political “cut-tail” that was given to the ruling PNM.
Passing on Knowledge
As the Public Relations Officer of the UNC from 2021, I can say that the UNC’s extremely powerful and effective 2025 campaign was the end point of many years of hard work, focused on achieving decisive victory in the general election.
Many people in the party made seminal contributions and were crucial to this victory. I am just sharing my own slice of the larger picture. Of course, I was always under the astute guidance of the Political Leader, and the efforts of the Deputy Political Leaders, the National Executive, the Opposition Leader’s Communication staff, the PROs at the Constituency level, and our many supporters and activists online and offline were all essential to victory. I hope they too will share their perspectives with the public.
I remember, as a student of politics in the 1990s, reading Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj’s paper presented at York University in Toronto on the UNC’s strategy in the 1991 elections. He was the first person I knew to introduce the concept of “marginal seats” in our politics. It was absolutely eye-opening, inspiring and opened new doors of understanding for me. Hopefully, students of politics today will also benefit from these behind the scenes insights. This should also have value for future PROs of the UNC as well.
Articulating the Challenges: Where were the Facts Ignored?
When the Hon. Kamla Persad-Bissessar first invited me to become PRO in late 2020, after the UNC’s defeat in that year’s General Elections, it came as a surprise.
Communications and Public Relations was not my particular field of training or practice. However, I had two decades of being highly exposed in traditional and social media, as a political, economic and social analyst and also on the media production side. I could bring this experience to serve the UNC.
More importantly, as a scholar, I had studied PNM propaganda deeply for decades, and developed definite ideas about its negative effects on society (it was essentially a half-century-long Psy-Op), and how it should be reversed.
Notably, the UNC had just lost the 2020 elections, although it was factually clear and statistically demonstrable that the PNM’s record in government was abysmal, particularly compared to UNC’s previous record.
But the facts clearly were not enough.
The conventional view was that the information just had to be sent out to the population more frequently, in greater volume, on more channels, and with a wider reach.
Of course that was important, but I believed that was insufficient. There was a deeper psychological block to people even listening to, let alone believing the facts, particularly among non-traditional UNC supporters. That barrier had to be overcome.
PNM Propaganda
The PNM had dominated the political narrative with particular, factually incorrect assumptions, which coloured and infected everything else:
1. Kamla Persad-Bissessar, and the UNC under her leadership, could not win any more elections.
2. The UNC and Kamla Persad-Bissessar were irrelevant, unpatriotic, critics without any solutions, and opposed to the Government merely for opposing’s sake, without care for the national welfare.
With these false assertions in place, it did not matter how many facts the UNC presented to the public, because this information would be ignored or dismissed as long as the UNC was presented as a losing, irrelevant party.
Sadly, this PNM propaganda was so effective that even many UNC supporters believed it.
In the mainstream media, sometimes a full week or even two would pass, and the media would not have any stories on the UNC or its views of national events.
In addition to this, all three newspapers had several explicitly pro-PNM, anti-Kamla columnists, given free reign to present PNM talking points as facts and to descend into personal attack. They also published a large number of prolific, sometimes vulgar pro-PNM, anti-Kamla letter writers. No columnist in the mainstream press was pro-UNC, and for many years very few, if any, letters supportive of the UNC were published.
This was the “meta-politics” – what laid behind, unspoken, and underneath, setting the very parameters for discussion – and was something which I intended to focus seriously on.
With this in mind, I accordingly accepted the Opposition Leader’s invitation to submit my name to the party’s National Executive as PRO. I began to formulate implementable solutions.
8 Point Program of Action
I developed a broad programme of action to counter this, based on these strategies:
1. Get Noticed, Do Not Be Ignored
2. Set the Agenda, Do Not Get Ensnared in PNM Narratives
3. Position the UNC as Winners
4. Stand Firm during Controversy, Develop a Fighting Spirit
5. Answer Critics Swiftly and Decisively
6. Neutralise the PNM’s race-baiting
7. Ground the UNC in its Philosophical, Sociological, Working-Class/Trade Union roots, and not fickle voters
8. Bring in non-UNC, non-traditional voices for reasonable discussion
Grounding in Truth
It is important to note that these strategies could only be effective if they were grounded in Truth.
Many people believe that effective propaganda can be based on lies. They believe that if you repeat a lie enough, it becomes the truth. They also believe that “perception is reality”.
Certainly, the PNM believe in that philosophy, along with the idea that if you say a lie with enough conviction, people will believe it to be true. They fooled the country in that way for decades.
However, I strongly disagree. Only reality is reality, and a lie can never become the truth.
Truth will always win in the end. Lies can only win temporarily and can never prevail. They will always ultimately unravel. People can be taught to believe lies, and lies can prevail for a long time, but consciously doing that is evil, and takes you into territory that any ethical person should never wish to go.
So the strategies that I am about to explain cannot be successfully used by propagandists who base themselves on lies and deception. When lies break down – as they inevitably will – so will the entire campaign.
Beyond Corporate Communications
An internal cultural change had to be made to implement this, however. The existing communications team was more or less grounded in the paradigm of Corporate Communications.
They issued official sounding press releases which used formal language and wording. They avoided controversy and rocking the boat. This fit into a certain idea of what it supposedly meant to be “Prime Ministerial”, above the fray, respectable, etc.
This stance works best when the media are obliged to listen to you and report what you say, such as when you are in government.
However, particularly in Opposition, it was ineffective against the harsh, abusive, lying and aggressive PNM government propaganda which continuously told the country to pay no attention to the opposition, while constantly insulting them. Trying to ignore a bully is never a good strategy.
Promote the Party, Not the PRO
Unfortunately, the previous PRO used the position to promote herself, rather than the party.
I sought to transform the role of the PRO to promote the party as a whole, and to demonstrate to the country that the UNC had a deep bench of talent.
1. Get Noticed, Do not be ignored
I implemented a more “insurgent”-type of campaign which borrowed heavily from internet marketing techniques where small companies and entrepreneurs have to get noticed in the mass market, amongst all the noise, distractions, and big brands with multi-million ad spends. I had much practical experience in that field.
Translating these techniques to our politics involved using very emotive, even provocative language, attention-grabbing headlines, along with visual psychology – sometimes using loud colours to “stop the scroll” on facebook, experimenting with fonts, spacing and formatting, using arresting, psychologically resonating imagery, etc. It was sometimes unconventional. Of course, we had to ensure that the issues we highlighted mattered to people, and would go viral because of our position, not simply because of superficial techniques.
I also implemented psychological insights from the relatively new disciplines of Behavioural Economics and Persuasion Theory, in addition to the history of mass political movements, where emotional and psychological communication was crucial.
Importantly, none of these techniques were used to manipulate, promote lies, bacchanal or empty noise. In fact, it was to deprogramme people from decades of false conditioning and psychological warfare.
At every point, our emotive hook was always backed by factual evidence, numbers, documents, timelines, etc. that could be checked and verified. The two aspects were absolutely necessary to work together. If there was no substance, our content would easily be dismissed after being called out the first few times.
At every stage, too, I received explicit approval from the leadership for each release. I ensured that I was not a rogue PRO, and did not wish to take the party down roads that the leadership did not approve of.
I was relentless with my PR efforts, posting “social proof” daily, carefully curating the day’s media stories on the UNC, creating a virtuous feedback circle.
We did achieve success, and as the Party Chairman noted during a National Executive Meeting, at no time in the party’s history was the UNC more present in the newspapers and on television, with news stories appearing virtually every day.
2. Set the Agenda, Ignore PNM Narratives
As I noted above, some things were more crucial, and subtle, than increasing the quantity and frequency of information.
The UNC needed to be proactive, not reactive. I employed political insights from poststructuralism and counter-hegemonic Gramscian theory. The UNC needed to set the agenda for national discussion, not the PNM.
The UNC too often fell into the trap of responding to PNM lies, propaganda, and wild accusations or claims. This was a losing game, as the PNM would always be in control of the conversation this way.
Instead, the UNC had to make the PNM react to our agenda.
A major part of this was instituting the Sunday Press Conferences, which the Leader immediately approved. At the practical level, DPL Jearlean John was essential to ensure that it kept going weekly, and her insights were key. This was later expanded to include mid-week pressers.
The UNC ended up dominating the Sunday evening news and Monday morning newspapers. The PNM Government was forced to respond to the issues we raised, instead of the other way around.
Importantly, this ultimately worked because the UNC agenda was not arbitrary, self-serving, or nonsensical. It was one that served and fought for the people, and one that they responded positively to. This made the PNM Government – and the wider public – unable to ignore it.
The Government kept responding to us because the UNC were the ones who consistently raised the most central and important issues, and framed the national discussion.
Indeed, one analyst, Abbigail Ajim, correctly observed that “This was the first political campaign where an opposition party, not the incumbent, set the tone for the election”.
3. Position the UNC as Winners
Another important subtle, psychological factor that had to be overcome was that in 2020 the UNC were positioned as a permanent Opposition, and as perpetual losers. Many UNC supporters and some members, even, appeared to accept this position. This manifested itself in many forms of defeatism and self-destructive behaviour, particularly among dissidents, who were some of the most psychologically affected.
We had to project the UNC as winners. The culture of “poor me one”, of victimhood, of constant complaining. was not the posture to win government.
It was not an accurate and true representation of the UNC. The UNC received the most votes in its history in 2020, and emerged as the most popular party in Trinidad. In every general, local and bye-election from 2015 there was a clear and consistent pattern of growth in voter support for the UNC, while voter support for the PNM consistently declined. In 2020, only 2,600 votes in San Fernando West and St. Joseph kept the UNC from Government. It was clear from early on that the UNC would easily gain those extra votes while the PNM lost them.
The party needed to reflect this unstoppable, upward trend, and display the appropriate confidence. We needed to look like winners, talk like winners, and act like winners.
In terms of visual presentation, the Parliamentary business suit became the uniform at our press conferences. The language in our press releases and media briefings had to be from a position of a government in waiting, not of a permanent opposition subservient to more powerful others.
Indeed, the PNM began to behave as if the UNC were in government. They constantly blamed Kamla Persad-Bissessar and the UNC for PNM failures, thereby suggesting that the UNC was the powerful party and the PNM were powerless victims. We turned the tables.
4. Stand Firm during Controversy, Develop a Fighting Spirit
Crucial to positioning oneself as a winner is to have unbreakable confidence in one’s thoroughly considered public statements.
This means one should never back down when there is controversy or pushback, just to please people or not to offend. One must stand on principle and be prepared to take flak for it.
This was a culture change for the party, since in the previous mindset, public pushback or criticism was seen as bad, because it potentially alienated voters. The goal was to please as many people as possible. This is wrong-headed thinking, however.
When one stands for the right thing, there will always be fierce opposition, especially from those who benefit from the current status quo. When you cave in, you lose the respect of others. When you can hold your position against criticism, you earn respect, even of your opponents. Indeed, if your adversaries are not disturbed or provoked by your positions, then you are not a real threat to them. And we needed to be a real threat to the PNM.
In this view, pushback from our opponents was an endorsement, and a sign that we were pushing the right issues and right buttons.
There were two instances where this was tested very early in my tenure. The first was an extended objection to unwarranted attacks from Guardian Media and Natalee Legore. The old team was against my unyielding stance, saying that we could not fight the media, but the Leader backed me. We stood firm. Up to today, however, Natalee Legore and I have an excellent professional relationship.
A second major controversy early in my tenure, was when the PNM and the US Embassy pushed back against a press release I wrote about all the unsafe areas in the US travel advisory being PNM strongholds. Both the PNM and the US Embassy pushed back forcefully, as did every single media house. The Express even wrote a full page hit piece with the headline, “Who is Dr Kirk Meighoo and who does he think he is? Is he a loose cannon in the United National Congress (UNC), given free rein by his political leader to run wild?” I stood firm and doubled down. We did nothing wrong.
In addition to this, I urged the party to return to its protest roots, and stage public demonstrations when our motions of no confidence were presented, to connect Parliament to ordinary people’s real concerns and lives. Again, this was initially controversial within the party, but the Leader approved it and it became part of the party’s modus operandi again.
I was immensely pleased when the Political Leader remarked during a National Executive Meeting that since I became PRO, the party had developed a fighting spirit.
5. Answer Critics Swiftly and Decisively
Another change to the previous PR was to swiftly and decisively respond to false propaganda, misleading spin, and other misinformation from the PNM, their proxies or others.
In the past, too many lies, insults and misinformation went unchallenged or unrefuted – or refuted too weakly and too late. The propaganda then stuck.
I was unrelenting, and became somewhat notorious for this. People on Twitter began to create memes and write Tweets anticipating my press releases.
Some of my favourites included Kejan Haynes:
“PM: Could you imagine if you didn't have those extra hospitals
Kirk Meighoo about to write the next press release bout thank Kamla”
(over the “Strutting Leo” meme of Leonardo DiCaprio)
https://x.com/KejanHaynes/status/1393638781673164810
Or the gif of Jim Carrey manically typing at his keyboard with the caption:
“Kirk Meighoo after this PNM meeting” https://x.com/blamefitz/status/1437945132989493248
This pattern of rapid, aggressive, and decisive response threw a huge wrench into the PNM’s propaganda machine, which they depended on for so long.
The PNM were not used to this version of the UNC, and they referred to this “new UNC” several times, trying to shame us back into timidity.
6. Neutralise the PNM's race-baiting
Another important strategy was to neutralise and essentially disable the PNM’s perennial weapon of choice: using racial appeals to its supporters, and falsely calling the UNC racist.
The UNC in the past refused to confront, refute and disarm this race-baiting, but that only allowed the PNM propaganda to stick, as in the 2020 elections.
This time, we anticipated the PNM’s false allegations of racism, warned the population even before they predictably pulled out the race card, and quickly debunked their racial appeals. This blunted their main weapon significantly.
7. Ground the UNC in its Philosophical, Sociological, Working-Class/Trade Union roots, and not fickle voters
Another important PR strategy was to ground the UNC in historical roots in the radical trade union movement, as a working-class party that was founded on the objective of uniting the two major races, which fought for economic inclusion, for civil rights, and against abuse of citizens by the state, among other things.
This was extremely important. The UNC was founded on enduring principles that were not being identified and acknowledged sufficiently.
Lazy, racial analysis has incorrectly painted the UNC as the inheritors of the Indian-based PDP and DLP parties. In fact, the UNC is a direct descendent of the Butler Party, the Workers and Farmers Party, the Black Power movement, and the radical Trade Union movement.
I constantly emphasised this. Hamid Ghany correctly surmised that the real issue in the 2025 election was class, not race. That was exactly our intention, particularly as Keith Rowley explicitly stated that his aim was to make the rich richer, and that he was not concerned with the widening gap between the rich and the poor. We stood completely against this.
I disagreed with the strategy of concentrating on wooing fickle “swing” voters by ignoring our principles and going with whatever was currently politically correct, popular or fashionable. Instead, we would win the “swing” voters by being principled and consistent, and staying true to our founding values.
8. Bringing in non-UNC, non-traditional voices
Finally, we brought in non-traditional UNC voices and influential voices, initially through our Round Table to Repeal the Amendment to the Procurement Act, which then provided the basis for the later Town Hall Meetings held under the Office of the Leader of Opposition.
This broadened our national reach and further helped us to set the national agenda, taking the lead away from the disastrous PNM Government which avoided accountability and transparency at every opportunity.
All these efforts from the Public Relations arm combined with and supported the equally impressive and important work done by other arms, officers, and activists of the party, to build the base for the hugely successful 2025 campaign.
I appreciate that even my opponents in the PNM have referred to me in contrast to their own PRO: “Best practice: In contrast, Dr. Kirk Meighoo—despite personal and professional controversies—has been visible, sharp, and aggressive in defending the UNC’s positions, issuing statements, rebutting attacks, and controlling narrative. That is what a PRO does.”
I am proud of the work we did. I thank the Political Leader, the Hon. Kamla Persad-Bissessar, for her support, guidance, and leadership, and for giving me the opportunity to play a part in this history-making campaign.
The task in the era of government is for the party and the administration to formulate new PR goals, undertake an updated analysis of the current political landscape, and create an appropriate strategy.
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