Uncle not ah we boy

February 05, 2001

"Uncle" not smarter than anybody. If we did not know that before the THA elections, at least we should know it now.

It is always amazing to hear political pundits such as Best and Reggie Dumas assign some special political acumen to the likes of Basdeo Panday. Best even claims that Panday is more clever than all the other politicians put together. Reggie suggests that Panday is "too skilled a politician to waste opportunity".

Nothing is further from the truth. It is all myth repeated often enough to the point that it has become acceptable to many without the slightest bit of investigation or attempt to measure. Panday as politician is neither clever, skilled nor special. In fact, he is most ordinary and the regular run-of-the-mill type many of whom have "graced" this landscape for decades.

As an example, just look at the campaign that the UNC waged in the THA election! Any scientific and clever approach to those elections ought to have forced any interested participant to asked the following question: what is the most burning issue for the people of Tobago?

Obviously the answer to that question is internal self-government in context of the unitary state of Trinidad and Tobago and by extension the relationship between the Tobago House of Assembly and the central Government.

Any clever politician, wanting to do well in those elections or even wanting to merely gain a political "toe-hold" on the island, would have zeroed in on that issue and advanced proposals and suggestions towards the amelioration of the relationship.

Hochoy Charles was just an aberration and a symptom of the breakdown of the relationship between central Government and the THA. But he, in himself, was never the fundamental issue. So a Panday-led UNC team going to Tobago, handing out Kiss bread, money, and other trinkets, and instigating a supposed fight with Charles over the question of road paving, while announcing to the populace that "Uncle" come to solve all their problems, could only be viewed as spitting on the spirit of Tobago's self-determination.

To add insult to injury, Panday suggested that central Government would set up a desk in Tobago for every respective Ministry, in other words, a central Government desk to parallel every single activity of the THA. Nothing could be more insensitive to the people of Tobago.

That proposal ran counter to all their aspirations and dreams. How can anyone view such a politician as clever and skilled? Even the condescending, patronising term, "Uncle", borrowed in anxious heat from an over-zealous female of lumpen proletarian consciousness, was a no-no and would not have been utilising by any "thinking", astute politician in that specific scenario.

What is this thing, anyway, with Kiss-bread? If you feel that you must give away bread, why not give away bread made in Tobago? Every single opportunity to sow deep political roots in Tobago was wasted and squandered by Panday and his cohorts.

In similar vein, anyone could trace Panday's political career from the days of the Tello & Hunt struggles in Orange Grove, when the question of the leadership of the sugar belt was still wide open, to the ULF, to the NAR and finally the UNC. All the historic opportunities squandered and wasted by this and other leaders of similar ilk could be easily listed.

Last year in this very space the following questions and views were posed: "What are they proposing to Caroni and Tobago? Will they talk to Caroni only of religious solidarity and militancy? Or will they seriously address the issues relevant to the sugar industry, including the rum stocks, both from the point of view of workers and farmers?

This is a milieu in which the general consciousness is still in the throes of being transformed from that of the conservative land-based worker-farmer, small shopkeeper, commercial types , to the consciousness of modern agrarian/industrial/service functionaries and professionals.

"Now that this milieu has finally been able to identify with and taste the elixir of State power, what next shall be proposed to them in context of a 21st century world? And in Tobago, where there has been for years a land-based 'gentry' and peasantry with a middle stratum of small proprietors, there is, in terms of consciousness, a close affinity to Caroni but with the additional circumstance of separation by water and separation in terms of an accumulation of different histories.

"It is not so much what they shall propose for Tobago, but what Tobago shall demarcate for itself when it puts 'Trinidad', ie central Government to sit down. No smart-aleck, tomfoolery, shall suffice in regard to Caroni and Tobago. Only genuine statesmanship shall bring results...".

That was last year. Back in June 1999, in a piece titled "Masters of Little Things", the following warning to political leaders was outlined: "Today, people are demonstrating by their actions that they require a new way of doing things, a new way of settling 'governance', probably even a new concept of 'governance' itself.

"It is really the task of leaders, if they are serious, to grasp fundamentally what people are saying and articulating by their actions and by their stance. It is essential that leaders recognise what the people are teasing at, what people are moving towards if only instinctively at first, in order to highlight what is on the horizon, highlight the 'new forms' that are still in the early stages, and so give to these new forms the fullness of probably even new language and the widening and depth of conceptual formulation.

"That is why it is so important that leaders be 'divergent thinkers', people who do not readily entrap their minds in set categories, who do not readily accept anything as 'given', as 'done deals' cast in stone. All accepted formulations, assumptions and practice must be challenged..."

Yet in 2001 this goodly gentleman, reputed by pundits to be our most clever and skilled politician, goes to Tobago to campaign with "Kiss bread" giveaways and ole talk about "Uncle come". Hopefully he has learnt the hard way that Uncle is not ah we boy.