He­len Dray­ton

Mi­nor­i­ty po­lit­i­cal par­ties lit­ter the past 65 years–just about one for each year. They have had names rang­ing from the Caribbean So­cial­ist Par­ty (CSP) of 1950 to the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of T&T (1979).Dr Patrick Solomon had found­ed the CSP and had con­test­ed the 1950 elec­tion to­geth­er with But­ler's, British Em­pire Cit­i­zens and Work­ers Home Rule Par­ty. He won two seats. But­ler won eight seats; the Trinidad Labour Par­ty, two, and In­de­pen­dents got six seats.

Cur­rent mi­nor­i­ty par­ties are the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR), suc­ces­sor of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion (ONR). The ONR had won 22.2 per cent or 91,704 of the votes in 1981, but failed to win any seats. No­tably, the Unit­ed Labour Front (ULF) won ten seats with 15.2 per cent of the votes.

The NAR had swept the 1986 elec­tions. Oth­er mi­nori­ties are the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC), In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP), the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Na­tion­al As­sem­bly (DNA), and the Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (MND). In To­ba­go, there are the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP), Plat­form of Truth (TPT), the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Ac­tion Con­gress (DAC), and To­ba­go For­wards.

The grave­yard of small par­ties over­flows giv­ing cur­ren­cy to views they are a waste of time, nine-day won­ders, big par­ty Cepeps, and vote split­ters.Some arose from dis­en­chant­ment of am­bi­tious as­pi­rants who had bounced their heads against Rome. Some be­lieved the mono­liths had lost found­ing prin­ci­ples and vot­ers need­ed an­oth­er op­tion, as well as a new elec­toral sys­tem of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion.Oth­ers were op­por­tunists who want­ed to sur­vive with­out grind, but ex­pect­ed to win seats. The ma­jor­i­ty were still­born.

It is one thing to emerge out of a bleed­ing womb and sig­nal ex­is­tence with a pub­lic cry, "I have ar­rived." It is an­oth­er to ex­pe­ri­ence in­fan­cy, creep­ing, walk­ing, build­ing lead­er­ship and in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty, and hav­ing a clear vi­sion. Crit­i­cal is a sense of self and pur­pose to sur­vive the tor­tur­ous road ahead and win suf­fi­cient pub­lic good­will that trans­forms to Par­lia­ment seats, in­de­pen­dence and ul­ti­mate­ly, gov­er­nance.

Ev­i­dent­ly, pub­lic doubt about their rel­e­vance is un­der­stand­able. It is a scep­ti­cism re­in­forced by new wounds in­flict­ed by cur­rent third par­ties on their sup­port­ers. They ex­pect­ed their rep­re­sen­ta­tives would have held to prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance.

The ex­is­tence of tena­cious mi­nor­i­ty par­ties is a sign of a healthy democ­ra­cy. The ground here is fer­tile for them to be­come dy­nam­ic forces af­fect­ing the coun­try's fu­ture de­vel­op­ment pos­i­tive­ly. If the goal is birth one day and to­mor­row a clean sweep at the polls, then pre­ma­ture death is the like­ly con­se­quence. It doesn't mean such an achieve­ment is be­yond a par­ty un­der the right lead­er­ship. If the sole ob­jec­tive is arrange­ments with big par­ties to win seats or get po­si­tions in gov­ern­ment then sub­ju­ga­tion, stran­gu­la­tion and splin­ter­ing of the par­ty are al­so like­ly out­comes.

Un­less the mi­nor­i­ty par­ties have de­fined their mis­sions and de­vel­op sus­tain­able brands based on sets of re­al­is­tic ob­jec­tives, they are not like­ly to sur­vive as re­silient, in­de­pen­dent en­ti­ties, or achieve re­spect­ful in­ter­de­pen­dence with­in an arrange­ment.What would have hap­pened if the ONR had mo­bilised their 91,000 sup­port­ers to be­come a dy­nam­ic pres­sure group with a mis­sion to in­flu­ence pol­i­cy in-be­tween elec­tions?What would the COP's po­si­tion be to­day had it been res­olute about elec­tion cam­paign fi­nanc­ing leg­is­la­tion and a new elec­toral sys­tem of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion?

What if it was vig­i­lant and pro-ac­tive about Life Sport cor­rup­tion and had in­sist­ed on time­ly re­leas­es of in­ves­ti­ga­to­ry re­ports on sev­er­al is­sues of al­leged cor­rup­tion? There is the doc­trine of col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. That is a dou­ble-edged sword weigh­ing on mi­nor­i­ty par­ties in coali­tions un­less they are un­com­pro­mis­ing about their prin­ci­ples. Plat­i­tudes are not sub­sti­tutes for de­ci­sive ac­tion when pub­lic trust is at stake.

Au­da­cious­ness, prin­ci­pled lead­er­ship and re­source­ful­ness are req­ui­sites for suc­cess. It is a job for the coura­geous. The MSJ is wor­thy of note. Apart from broad, re­al­is­tic goals and pub­lic ap­peal there are hu­man fac­tors. The ex­tents to which the ex­ec­u­tive of mi­nor­i­ty par­ties have re­li­able sources of live­able in­comes or are fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent may de­ter­mine the par­ties' abil­i­ty to sur­vive the long haul as in­de­pen­dent sys­tems.

Lu­cra­tive po­si­tions in gov­ern­ment or state con­tracts are en­trap­ments. A loy­al, paid-up mem­ber­ship is nec­es­sary. It is why com­pre­hen­sive elec­tion cam­paign fi­nanc­ing leg­is­la­tion and po­lit­i­cal par­ty fi­nanc­ing are im­por­tant. Apart from the ben­e­fit of trans­paren­cy of in­come sources, state fund­ing could lev­el the play­ing field.

That is a fea­ture in cam­paign fi­nanc­ing laws of en­light­ened democ­ra­cies. Vi­brant and un­taint­ed po­lit­i­cal par­ties are too im­por­tant to the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process to leave their cam­paign fi­nanc­ing to anony­mous fi­nanciers whose mo­tive is to ped­dle in­flu­ence on na­tion­al pol­i­cy. The re­sult is wide­spread cor­rup­tion.

In-be­tween elec­tions, mi­nor­i­ty par­ties should im­ple­ment strate­gies to morph from the elec­tion mode to ob­jec­tive and for­ward think­ing, pro-ac­tive pres­sure groups ad­vo­cat­ing good gov­er­nance and prac­tis­ing it at the par­ty lev­el.There are op­por­tu­ni­ties here for mi­nor­i­ty par­ties. Cir­cum­vent­ing the process through con­ve­nient arrange­ments while not hav­ing courage of con­vic­tion to com­mand re­spect, thwart their fu­ture prospects.