THE FINALE of season 20 of the CBS reality/game-show, Survivor, aired two Sundays ago, when Survivor fans happily watched the know-it-all, thinks-he's-the-greatest, God's-gift-to-game shows Russell get his comeuppance by not receiving a single vote from the nine-member jury that awarded the US$1M prize; and it struck me, watching the live webcast of the Trinidad & Tobago general election results on www.ctntworld.com, that there were huge similarities between a wildly imaginative, intrigue-ridden, melodramatic American TV show and ordinary politics in Trinidad & Tobago; indeed, but for copyright infringement, we might have called Monday's general election, "Survivor: Trinidad & Tobago".

Certainly as many TT voters as CBS viewers were delighted to see former TT Prime Minister Patrick Manning get much the same treatment as former CBS Survivor Russell. He, who not so long ago was bypassing the people and scheming directly with then Leader of the Opposition Mr Panday to squeeze een an executive presidency through the Constitutional back door, he who had an absolute majority, he who rubbed shoulders with world leaders and made cricket jokes for the amusement of his buddy, the Aussie PM, he of the 26-15 absolute majority  - has, in two days, come down to a joke making the rounds on the Internet: what is the similarity between the PNM and a small maxi? Both have 12 seats.

From the moment the snap election was called, Trinidadians were rejoicing that they didn't have to wait two-and-a-half more years to dump Mr Manning. Anytime I was there, people walked up to me in the street to tell me they were voting against him. On this website, in a poll asking whether the UNCOP or the PNM would win, ten times as many BC Raw voters preferred the People's Partnership. The PNM just barely held on to some of their "safe" seats: Colm Imbert's fiefdom of Diego Martin N-E, normally his by twice as many votes as the next guy gets, was won by 400-odd votes.

But, amazingly, they never saw it coming, particularly Patos, as anyone who watched his crestfallen concession speech on Monday night would have realised. You could say our own Patos got the kind of blindside that was a feature of this last season of Survivor: Heroes vs Villains. For whatever reason - the revelation of God, immense hubris, simple stupidity - Mr Manning and the PNM really thought they were in like thin when they were out like stout. It wasn't very good politics for them but it was diverting enough as pure entertainment for me to consider emailing Survivor host Jeff Probst to suggest they consider Trinidad for the next season's location.

Now I'm as relieved as the next several hundred thousand people who voted for the 41 representatives of the People's Partnership (or, more accurately, voted against one man named Patrick Manning in 41 different districts) that the Peoples' Partnership formed the government; but almost anything would have been better than five more years of the PNM. What the firetruck would they have done, if they'd won? Indeed, the question really is, what wouldn't they have done? Their incompetence would have been limited only by the drop in the white people' energy tax. Anything imaginable - a plastic bag plant when the world is aiming to be plastic bag-free, paving the Savannah to make an airstrip for the executive president's jet  - could have come out of the Manning Wonder Bag.

Indeed, I'm more idealistic than most in hoping Kamla will discern and seize this second opportunity for greatness which History has presented her, this chance to become a real leader of a people of peoples. If she saw the possibility, our Kamla could assume the responsibility and bring together a quarrelsome, frightened bunch of unsure, not-yet-formed citizens. In truth, it's not the bad poet but the little bit of real visionary in me who sees that, if she had the will, Kamla could be the Mother of the Nation.

But, once I look at it a moment too long, Trinidad & Tobago politics keeps collapsing into American TV game/reality shows, like those three-D posters from which, if you stare at them, a picture emerges out of chaos - except that it is chaos that emerges out of any TT/TV picture.

Within the People's Partnership itself, I can easily see Survivor, season 21, and can even discern likely alliances of individuals prepared to sell out everyone else to ensure they're in the last group to have a shot at the big money prize. You don't have to be perspicacious to see who will shoot their mouth off and get themselves voted off the island first. You can forecast who is likely to win the most immunity and reward challenges. Why, there are even Heroes and Villains; and, look here, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Anand Ramlogan, Kamla's newly-appointed AG, just named the Celebrity Apprentice?

The similarities between American TV and TT politics abound. What is our candidate screening process if not, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? On firetrucking Temptation Island? Start campaigning with Let's Make a Deal and see if you can get yourself elected to the Wheel of Fortune. Bring any permutation or combination of the Pandays back as senators in the Big Brother house and watch Parliament become a Family Feud. Of course, until Mr Manning retires, he will always be The Biggest Loser - unless you remember him signing the Declaration of Port of Spain in a big room all by himself, when he could be the Last Comic Standing. The idealist in me hopes we've just had an Extreme Makeover or a Clean Sweep or a Clean House; but the realist knows the next five years is going to be an extended Blind Date. We'll never be the Real World but we'll always be in Jeopardy.

BC Pires is pimping your ride

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