The only way

April 07, 2004

Some time ago in this very space, the following view was expressed: "To fight is to be proactive, to fight-up is to be reactive. 'Fighting' presupposes that one is focused on the fundamental issue or issues at hand, has examined all the relevant dimensions, thought things through and worked out thereby an approach to handling the various stages in the process of resolving burning questions. 'Fighting-up' pays no regard to such a process and involves the incoherent engagement in the outing of bush-fires."

There is no science; no sense of craft in the act of fighting-up, there is no clear aim or objective, no strategy to guarantee success.

People who fight-up are people whose stock in trade is based purely on emotional reaction to their pain and hurt.

In politics, those who "fight" rather than "fight-up" are those who develop agendas of interlinked minimum and maximum programmes which address both their immediate needs and concerns, as well as that of the people as a whole.

It also behooves those who wish to "fight" to conceptualise for the future, new, alternative institutions to ameliorate the human condition. It is all about theory and practice, strategy and tactics and how these are harmonised and integrated in the multifaceted journey that is called life.

What we are seeking to establish is a methodology, a way of seeing and doing, a key or guide to engagement in all aspects of life. It must form the basis of all modern relations, be they political, economic or cultural, in particular the relations between leaders and those whom they seek to lead.

There have been no serious interpretations to the Larry Achong issue. The fundamentals are classic. Here was a person who found conflict between his role as a Member of Parliament-the representative of a certain party who won the seat of Point Fortin-and his role as a Minister in the Executive, a functionary in one arm of the State machinery, ie the government.

The very fact that the conflict could not be resolved is quite clear an indication that in this culture the party that forms the government cannot grow, is subservient, given the excessive powers that are constitutionally bestowed on the majority leader, who appoints a Cabinet, and in so doing, in accordance with his own advice and counsel, is neither bounded by any criteria nor circumscribed by any convention or regulation.

No one has expressed this particular conflict as a fundamental antagonistic contradiction between party and government.

In the first place not many people make the distinction between the two. The party is a minority organisation that coalesces around certain social interests and agitates and mobilises people in their varied communities around a programme of activity, ie engages in politics, geared to win State power that provides the means with which the party's vision can be implemented.

State power, in that context, is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Elections are only a minute part of the "politics." The bigger part involves the winning over of people by persuasive argument and engagement to a path of development and social transformation.

The party is a vanguard of ideas, the academic instrument that informs the practice or guides the action; that serves to empower people through their self-activity to make a difference.

Now once that party wins State power, it forms a government that has to be a government of all the people, of those who supported it as well as those who did not. But the competing of ideas does not stop. The party still has the task of promoting ideas and keeping the vision alive.

In fact, the view is that the party has to keep the government on its toes, precisely because governments are by nature conservative and are upholders of the status-quo. It cannot but be so.

Governments are sworn to uphold all the laws, even laws that are traditionally anachronistic, socially status-biased or downright primitive. The party has to keep pushing the government in a progressive direction.

Any party in the Caribbean today has to have positions on all the key national and international issues: Caricom and the Single Market Economy; Haiti and the its way forward; Cuba; globalisation; FTAA; north/south hemispheric relations; south/south dialogue and so on, as well as all the local issues of the day: T&T /Venezuela relations; T&T/Barbados relations, crime, religious/cultural tensions etc, etc.

And the party must pronounce its positions outside of and independent of the government.

That is why for the livelihood of the party not all its stalwarts and frontline leadership should be absorbed in government and the day-to-day affairs of State management.

The party must maintain some distance from government if its "politics" is to stay alive and develop as world affairs demand and require.

How come, to date, the party to which Larry Achong belongs is yet to pronounce on the fundamental issue that surrounds his resignation from Cabinet?

There should be a clear, informed and emphatic statement from the party on the issue involving the pros and cons of a sectoral minimum wage to launch the debate. That's how modern, developed people behave.

Instead a lot of nonsense has been paraded about related side issues; that's "fighting-up." But yet, the party-all the parties for that matter-remain dumb on the fundamentals.

The only way forward to genuine constitutional reform is for the parties themselves to recognise their reason for being and so refashion themselves for a new beginning.