Silly Politics on the CCJ, Part II
Aug 17, 2003,
by Dr Winford James
Basdeo Panday needs to change his silly position on the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) - not to please Manning, or the PNM, or newspaper columnists, but the vast majority of West Indian people. He should stick to his agitation for domestic constitutional reform, but not at the expense of a West Indian cause. In linking that agitation to the establishment of the CCJ, he and his party have no leg to stand on. It is one of those bogus, spurious connections that leaders make when (they think) other more reasonable actions have failed.
Bush and Blair behaved likewise in the tragic Iraqi silliness. There simply was no (more) evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq to justify an Americo-British invasion, but Bush and Blair went ahead nonetheless, and why? Because they badly wanted to teach the master terrorist Saddam a mighty lesson for the September 11 terror, and since they could produce no convincing evidence of Saddam's terrorism, they used the spurious basis of WMDs hidden, undestroyed, and waiting for murderous deployment against weak nations and Anglo-Saxon interests in the Gulf and at home. They did so because they could - as simple as that. And look at the mess it has landed them and American soldiery in!
Panday's silliness will have no such dangerous outcome, only frustration of a West Indian legal cause, but it proceeds from the same kind of 'I'll do it because I can do it' attitude. He has deliberately chosen to think as follows: 'Manning and them discriminating against Indian, and they could do so under the Constitution and get away with it. I make up mi mind this discrimination have to stop. But I in opposition now, and opposition cyar do nothing in law to stop it. So what A go do? I try civil disobedience, but mi people and them eh taking me on. Well, if Manning and dem want CCJ and they need my vote, they cyar get it unless they end their discrimination. I eh budging!'
All right. All right? No! It would be okay for Panday to be silly on his own affairs, but not on West Indian ones. The desire of West Indians for their own final court of appeal is not to be frustrated by the silliness of a political leader frustrated by being out of power and stultified by that powerlessness into seeing racial discrimination as only an anti-Indian phenomenon. But what would it take to turn him away from that wrong-headed course? Independent thought in his party!
In West Indian politics and government, where the prime minister is lord and governor, there has been little structural evidence of independence thought. It's been typically a state of affairs where the political leader, the premier, and prime minister call the shots and get their way. The politics in particular pivots around one man - his discretions, his moods, his strengths, his foibles. Bright men and women - so certified by the schools and universities - are apparently forced by the traditional political culture to take opportunistic leave of their senses and, therefore, their independence, and support, let's be frank about it, arrant nonsense.
It is arrant nonsense to have supported the CCJ while you were in government, to continue to hold that you support it in opposition, but to refuse to vote for it unless the government gives you something for it and, thereby, to promote your whimsy over West Indian integration and West Indian legal and social advancement. But well-schooled people are prepared to do exactly that. Is the presumption that they were trained to be independent, critical thinkers for the advancement of their persons and their societies wrong? Or is it that we are underappreciating how powerful political culture (and the insecurities that go with it) is?
There can be no doubt that independent thought is liberating, vivifying, and promotive of personhood. Why therefore don't the party politicians embrace it?
This underuse of independent thought is a sure sign of our undeveloped status as ex-slave, ex-indenture societies. It is there in almost every major aspect of our lives. It is there in our import-intensive economies and our structural insufficiencies for product and process innovation. It is there in our refusal, nay, our incapacity, to see our routine language, Creole, as authentic and bona fide and autonomising as Standard English. And it is there in our underappreciation of opinion polls as barometers of societal thinking and as bases for political decision-making.
If a poll were to be done on the UNC's refusal to vote for the CCJ, I am sure a large majority would disagree with them. But I am also sure that Panday, with his usual sycophantic support, would dismiss the poll result.
How undeveloped will we remain?
Part I | Part II | Part III
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