Tony Fras­er

Over the decades it has be­come clear that be­cause of the na­ture of the his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary po­lit­i­cal mo­bil­i­sa­tion and par­ty af­fil­i­a­tion based along lines of eth­nic­i­ty and even race, there will al­ways be se­ri­ous ques­tions sur­round­ing the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of whichev­er of the trib­al par­ties in of­fice to eq­ui­tably de­vel­op and dis­trib­ute the re­sources of the so­ci­ety to the ben­e­fit of all. Sub­stan­ti­a­tion of that view is ex­pressed every day in the news­pa­pers and on the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion talk shows, whichev­er the par­ty in pow­er. This col­umn is there­fore sug­gest­ing that the time has ar­rived for the so­ci­ety to face the re­al­i­ty of our his­to­ry of the nar­row eth­nic po­lit­i­cal mo­bil­i­sa­tion and align­ment and be­gin to con­struct a con­sti­tu­tion­al and in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work to counter the prob­lems of build­ing a trans­par­ent­ly just so­ci­ety. A glance at that his­tor­i­cal re­al­i­ty should put the po­si­tion ex­pressed above in­to per­spec­tive. In the post-slav­ery pe­ri­od and by the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, Afro-Tri-nidad was very much a part of the ini­ti­a­tion of the Pan African Move­ment and Gar­vey­ism was to fol­low in the 1920s.

Labour con­scious­ness at the wa­ter­front, so­cial con­scious­ness with the re­turn of sol­diers from the WWI the­atre were ex­pressed in the Trinidad Work­ing Men's As­so­ci­a­tion. And while TWA in­cor­po­rat­ed a mea­sure of eth­nic di­ver­si­ty at the lead­er­ship and mass lev­els, it was es­sen­tial­ly based among Afro-Tri­nis in the ur­ban cen­tre. The Trinidad Labour Par­ty lat­er emerged from the labour strug­gles of the pe­ri­od along sim­i­lar eth­nic lines. By the 1940s, mid­dle class blacks and a scat­ter­ing of French-Cre­oles and the trav­es­aou had be­gun the po­lit­i­cal mo­bil­i­sa­tion through the West In­di­an Na­tion­al­ist Par­ty (WINP), seek­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. Then there was the But­ler Par­ty which com­bined el­e­ments of la-bour and was the most suc­cess­ful sin­gle par­ty of the 1950 gen­er­al elec­tion. Cul­mi­nat­ing the search by the ma­jor­i­ty Afro-Trinidad for po­lit­i­cal form, Er­ic Williams, with a mid­dle class lead­er­ship com­pris­ing quite a num­ber of In­di­ans and lo­cal whites, cap­tured the black mass­es in the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment.

In­di­an po­lit­i­cal mo­bil­i­sa­tion start­ed as ear­ly as 1925 in the East In­di­an Na­tion­al Par­ty and de­vel­oped mo­men­tum from there in­to the 1940s and 1950s, with sig­nif­i­cant In­do-Trinida­di­an politi­cians en­ter­ing the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil to rep­re­sent a num­ber of In­do-Tri­ni-da­di­an com­mu­ni­ties. By the 1950s, the In­di­an po­lit­i­cal ini­tia­tive be­gun to emerge in the form of the Bhadase Maraj-led, Peo­ple's De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Lat­er there were links with the POPPG, the mer­chant and Catholic par­ty of the era. Even­tu­al­ly, the In­do-par­ty was to have its be­ing through the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s in the var­i­ous in­car­na­tions of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty. The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is the most mod­ern form of that po­lit­i­cal con­stituen­cy. This very ab­bre­vi­at­ed his­to­ry leaves out much sub­tle dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion which can be made, but de­tailed his­to­ry is not the ob­jec­tive of this col­umn. What is, is to demon­strate that po­lit­i­cal mo­bil­i­sa­tion and par­ty af­fil­i­a­tion have been es­sen­tial­ly along the lines of eth­nic­i­ty and race. The two mass mo­bil­i­sa­tion ef­forts not in­clud­ed in the above were the labour-based up­ris­ing of 1937, first among oil work­ers in the deep south which soon spread to work­ers in sug­ar, and the eth­nic and so­cial-class at­tempt of the 1970 Black Pow­er Move­ment. Even if tan­gen­tial­ly and not very suc­cess­ful­ly, the ban­ner head­line "Africans and In­di­ans unite" sought to bring Afro and In­do-Trinida­di­ans/To­bag­o­ni­ans in­to a mass po­lit­i­cal move­ment.

The at­tempts by the eth­nic-based par­ties to fash­ion po­lit­i­cal move­ments to in­cor­po­rate Afros, In­dos and oth­ers have been ar­ti­fi­cial, shot­gun mar­riages.

They have not last­ed, es­pe­cial­ly when in gov­ern­ment. The de­fi­cien­cies of those ef­forts range through be­ing bad­ly con­ceived and con­struct­ed, dom­i­nat­ed by po­lit­i­cal egos and self- cen­tred am­bi­tions of the lead­ers, dis­trust, fear and racial an­tag­o­nism based on the his­tor­i­cal cir­cum­stances of the coun­try. Per­haps most de­fi­cient have been the in­ad­e­quate con­sti­tu­tion­al and in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­works at the par­ty and state lev­els to es­tab­lish the mod­el for trans­par­ent and qual­i­ty gov­er­nance which could re­sult in eq­ui­table de­vel­op­ment of the so­ci­ety and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of re­sources. In 1986, the Pan­day group felt it would be swamped by the non-In­do fac­tion of the NAR. Soon enough, the al­le­ga­tions came about a "ULF grab for pow­er" and the counter that Robin­son and the Afro el­e­ments of the NAR had usurped the gov­ern­ment. With­in a year of the coali­tion of 1995 be­tween the UNC and Rob-in­son's NAR/DAC, To­ba­go felt it was get­ting a raw deal, be­ing dom­i­nat­ed by the UNC. Lloyd Best, one of the ma­jor ar­chi­tects of the no­tion of the "par­ty of par­ties," said the pen­du­lum had swung too far to Ca­roni. The same can be said of the im­bal­ance of to­day in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. With the PNM there has been lit­tle pre­tence at cre­at­ing a bal­anced plat­form-not the pre­tence of the par­ties of cast­ing sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of the mi­nor­i­ty groups in con­stituen­cies in which they do not stand a chance.

Man­ning reached as far as say­ing that he could find "no In­di­ans" to give min­is­te­r­i­al pow­er to. Sat Ma­haraj nev­er al­lows any­one to for­get that suc­ceed­ing PNM gov­ern­ments from Williams through Cham­bers failed to give even one Hin­du a min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio. Be­yond po­si­tions in of­fice, analy­ses have been made about al­leged dis­tort­ed re­source al­lo­ca­tion, de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes, so­cial wel­fare, the award of con­tracts based on par­ty and by ex­ten­sion eth­nic af­fil­i­a­tion. These are re­cur­ring themes of the pol­i­tics, elec­toral cam­paigns and gov­er­nance, all of them dri­ven by sus­pi­cion, the re­al­i­ty of the na­ture of po­lit­i­cal par­ties; that re­al­i­ty be­ing that the par­ties are mo- bilised along eth­nic and racial lines. In gov­ern­ment, the ex­ec­u­tive can­not help but seek to wa­ter their po­lit­i­cal con­stituen­cies with a view to re­turn­ing to pow­er in the next elec­tion. In the in­stance of the PNM, Man­ning, af­ter the de­feat of 1995, said he learnt his les­son in that he did not take care of "peo­ple's needs," ef­fec­tive­ly the needs of Afro-Trinidad. In­side the PP Gov­ern­ment, with the de­ci­sion-mak­ing pow­er ef­fec­tive­ly in the hands of the UNC, the In­do dom­i­na­tion is patent­ly ob­vi­ous. The re­al­i­ty is that un­less there is deep or­gan­ic trans­for­ma­tion of the par­ty and the pol­i­tics, the con­sti­tu­tion­al and in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work is per­haps the best mechan- ism to force par­ties and gov­ern­ments to gov­ern in the in­ter­est of all.

To be con­tin­ued