Runners Astride and Eager

09, Aug 1999
Responses to this column have so far been quite consistent. They encourage us to keep on with the effort and accolades have been bestowed on the kind and level of social analysis imparted here in this space.

On a couple of occasions, avid readers scanned the columns and placed them on the Net, the result being that certain "chat-rooms" of the Caribbean Diaspora had a great deal to say debating various issues.

In addition, we have been invited by some to present to them our ideas on various matters and, in some instances, our membership to social and political organisations have been solicited openly.

But on July 27, we received, by far, the greatest challenge to date. It behoves us to carry the entire bit of e-mail received and since we have not sought permission to identify the sender, we shall not do so.

This particular e-mail reads:
"Dear Mr Rennie, are you still working on the details of a system of local or community government which would ensure that every member of each local community is identified, included and registered as such and who is thereby empowered to share the responsibilities and privileges of membership in the local community; and that by extension, a country consisting of such communities would most closely approximate the ideal of a democratic society? "This, I recall, was the creative idea which appeared, some 30 years ago, in the publication New Beginning which, I also recall, you edited at the time.

"The continuing debate on the issue of centralisation versus decentralisation in the context of local government would certainly benefit from the theoretical formulations, practical investigations, and consequent conclusions derived from the research conducted at the time and from any further work done over the years.

"Perhaps your present perch as a newspaper columnist and your prestige as a seasoned thinker may afford you the opportunity to publicly reopen the discussion and, hopefully, to complete the work and to help launch our society into a truly new beginning for community inclusiveness and participation."

Indeed, my personal experience as a villager in Central Trinidad convinces me that common community interests as villagers have always tended to be more real and socially binding that common interests as nationals important as the latter is purported to be.

"This maybe the context in which the anticipated decreasing power and importance of central governments could become a workable and welcome reality. Just in case you are no longer in a position to continue carrying this baton of social engineering, I trust that you may have other runners already astride and eager to receive the baton and to run the succeeding legs of the relay. I hope that, in due course, I could help to find some able runners."

Yes, at 23-years-old, some 30 years ago, we were like riders in the sky. Bold enough to advocate a new system of government that recognised the absolute necessity to empower people "where they live and where they work."
We called it a government of "Assemblies of the People".

It was divergent political thinking, premised on the major assumption that all "representative forms" are, in fact, a limitation to the human condition and that people everywhere in the modern world are "ready" to represent themselves given the availability of information due to technological development.

We traced historical examples from all over the world as well as from the Caribbean experience to show that the eternal quest of humanity is for the broadest possible democracy, and that all the instruments that they conceptualise, design, create and build to help them accomplish this are, by nature, reflective of this very demand and quest.

But that at every crucial point of seeming victory, such instruments are abandoned in favour of "representatives" and representative forms and structures which in turn are quickly compromised, become transformed into their opposites, in other words, quickly change from being agents of development into hindrances against further democracy, and the people are left out even more from the process. It is a recurring cycle.

Thirty years ago, in our boldness, we wished to put a stop to that cycle.

Next week we shall tell the story of the New Beginning Group and the Assemblies of the People.

e-mail: brenco@tstt.net.tt