Little Right Politics Here
In a global sense, the only right politics occurring in Trinidad and Tobago in the context of the 18-18 political impasse is the PNM's quiet tenacious clinging to control of the state and the UNC's strident determination to have elections immediately called to oust the PNM out of their control. So, from the PNM, we are treated to revelations of scandals about, and commissions of inquiry into, UNC (mis)conduct and (mis)deeds in government and, from the UNC, to charges of illegality, illegitimacy, nepotism, and incompetence about current PNM governance and to threats of civil disobedience. But right as that kind of politics is, it is also quite boring, disturbingly shallow, and totally unprogressive.
Boring, because a political culture of dependence on party and party leader keeps moving us from one repetition to another while we wait for inevitable general elections before the end of the year. Shallow, because the real issue of constitutional overhaul driven by nationwide community self-assertion and inter-community consultation is being glossed over by the parties and party leaders in favour of an agenda of party tyranny and perpetuation of the first-past-the-post reflex. Unprogressive, because we look set to squander, as perhaps the most expedient way out of our impasse, the opportunity gifted to us by an as-yet-unfathomable constellation of forces to change the totally unsatisfactory way we have governed ourselves by both PNM and UNC wanting and hoping to win even the slimmest margin of victory possible in the next elections - that of two seats.
We remain a country ethnically torn into multiple parts, but especially into Indo-Trinidad, Afro-Trinidad, and Tobago. We remain a country where the party that moves past the post first (whether by itself or in combination with a smaller party) takes the cash register all to itself and mostly, and blatantly to boot, for its ethnic support. We remain a country where a single member of parliament, elected by a single constituency, becomes prime minister and - subject only to (possible) political constraints from his party, his own temperament as leader, and presidential adventurism - acts, constitutionally, as an executive dictator and tyrant. We remain a country where, no matter how Tobago votes, it is subject to the whims of Trinidad in financial, if not policy-making, terms.
So if either PNM or UNC wins the inevitable elections by the slimmest possible margin of two seats, how will we benefit constitutionally and politically? How will there be an end to routine ethnic hegemony, prime ministerial dictatorship, Tobagonian subservience? If there were no social forces during the opportunity of the impasse to make us take definitive action to change ourselves for the better (in the terms suggested above), how could a breaking of the impasse with a two-seat majority achieve it?
Wouldn't we be back to square one?
Square one?! Who, except the parties that are obsessed with the idea of winning state control for a substantial ethnic advantage, wants square one? Why would we want square one with its ethnic discriminations (including ethnic state boards and structural discrimination against Tobago!), institutionalised prime ministerial arrogance and one-manism, ministerial and state board corruption, government from top down, and disproportionate distribution of the national pie?
But that's where we are unswervingly headed - again. And while it is rough for people like me to be bombarded left, right, and centre with boring, repetitive, shallow, and reactionary positions, the roughest cross of all to bear is the virtual absence in the society of strong community forces to shunt government into right, people-based ways of governance. The matter is deeply sociological, requiring an examination of where we are on the field of social and psychosocial development globally.
And so the question arises, How do we build such forces and, in particular, how long will it take?
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