Tony Fras­er

To turn the pol­i­tics around and for there to be a greater chance of qual­i­ty gov­er­nance be­com­ing in­sti­tu­tion­alised, there is need for a dra­mat­ic re­duc­tion in the size of po­lit­i­cal par­ties and a dous­ing of the fa­nat­i­cal zeal and blind loy­al­ty which sup­port­ers now have for their po­lit­i­cal par­ties and lead­ers.

Over the decades, eth­nic-based sen­si­bil­i­ties and cleav­ages have on oc­ca­sion and in cer­tain cir­cum­stances hard­ened in­to racial an­tag­o­nisms, one group against the oth­er. Elec­tors and the sev­er­al group­ings which com­prise the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty must come to the re­al­i­sa­tion that the above list­ed traits have been im­plant­ed in their po­lit­i­cal DNA.

More­over, that the re­sults of the pur­suit of such pol­i­tics are at the core of group con­flict, jeal­ousies, poor qual­i­ty gov- er­nance, cor­rup­tion and the per­va­sive­ness and re­silience of a pol­i­tics right­ly de­scribed by Bas­deo Pan­day as "hav­ing a moral­i­ty of its own."

Those who ques­tion the above should hon­est­ly as­sess (if they can, be­cause par­ti­san po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ties cloud judg­ment and dim the sens­es) the pur­suit of pol­i­tics in the pe­ri­od of in­de­pen­dence un­der the par­ty sys­tem. When in of­fice, the Afro base of sup­port­ers of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment be­lieves its par­ty and the god-like lead­ers are in­fal­li­ble. More than that, the eth­nic sup­port­ers be­lieve they have a right to spe­cial priv­i­leges from the State.

The sup­port­ers there­fore over­look and/or ra­tio­nalise en­trenched cor­rup­tion, eth­nic pref­er­ence and at times poor gov­er­nance. In fact, PNM sup­port­ers have even glo­ri­fied the in­duced psy­cho­log­i­cal de­pen­dence that has left com­mu­ni­ties such as those in south Port-of-Spain in a prim­i­tive un­de­vel­oped con­di­tion.

The In­do-Trinidad fol­low­ing of the UNC, long kept out of pow­er by what it sees as the dom­i­nant and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry rule of the PNM, be­lieves "it is we time now" and seeks to jus­ti­fy in­com­pe­tence, bac­cha­nal, poor gov­er­nance, eth­nic pref­er­ences and nepo­tism in gov­ern­ment as "cul­ture" and "fam­i­ly val­ues."

As the na­tion, still in the pro-cess of for­ma­tion, ap­proach­es 50 years of po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence there has to be a fun­da­men­tal and non-emo­tion­al as­sess­ment of where we have got to and pro­pos­als for a ma­jor de­par­ture from the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem and cul­ture in­her­it­ed, adopt­ed and cre­at­ed.

My pro­pos­al is for po­lit­i­cal par­ties to shrink in­to small cadres of ex­perts who fo­cus on the cre­ation of mech­a­nisms to or­gan­ise the State and on the de­vel­op­ment of eco­nom­ic and so­cial pol­i­cy mea­sures to be un­der­tak­en if elect­ed. For one thing, such a po­lit­i­cal par­ty will by ne­ces­si­ty at­tract the mix of skills, qual­i­fi­ca­tions, ex­pe­ri­ence, proven com­pe­tence and oth­er ne­ces­si­ties for suc­cess­ful­ly draw­ing up blue­prints for gov­er­nance and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of plans and pro­grammes.

The par­ties or cadres will then have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to sell their ideas to the na­tion­al elec­torate with­out the crutch of ap­peal­ing to eth­nic, so­cial, class and oth­er bi­as­es. With­out the mass fol­low­ing of con­tem­po­rary po­lit­i­cal par­ties, elec­toral cam­paigns will be shorn of non-es­sen­tials, bac­cha­nal, name-call­ing, mud-sling­ing and the hid­den-agen­da items that gal­vanise the eth­nic, re­li­gious and so­cial groups.

Cam­paign costs will be re­duced to a min­i­mum, cut­ting out the po­lit­i­cal in­vestors and the need for ad­ver­tis­ers, pro­pa­gan­da spe­cial­ists and mind­ben­ders whose ma­jor func­tion in cam­paigns is to dis­tort re­al­i­ty. Sure the po­lit­i­cal stump will not be any­where near as ex­cit­ing and en­ter­tain­ing as it is now: a ral­ly for the tribes, those look­ing for a "wuk" on the mor­row of the elec­tion, and every con­ceiv­able form of hang­er-on lin­ing up for a job, a con­tract, ac­cess to the de­ci­sion-mak­ers et al.

But the cam­paign would sure­ly re­quire sub­stance from the par­ties and the plac­ing on stage of com­pe­tence which can be in­ter­ro­gat­ed.

In this re­spect, de­bates on poli­cies and the in­tegri­ty of those of­fer­ing them­selves for of­fice will be­come manda­to­ry. The de­bates will pro­vide the op­por­tu­ni­ty to the elec­torate to scru­ti­nise poli­cies, pro­grammes and the char­ac­ter of in­di­vid­u­als of­fer­ing them­selves for of­fice.

In gov­ern­ment, min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tions would be al­lo­cat­ed on a trans­par­ent and ac­count­able ba­sis and put be­fore the pop­u­la­tion for dis­cus­sion and ap­proval. Here, there can be some adop­tion and adap­ta­tion of the Amer­i­can sys­tem of re­quir­ing peo­ple to un­der­go spe­cial­ly con­vened hear­ings be­fore they can be ap­point­ed.

For the sys­tem to work there must be the de­vel­op­ment of the pub­lic and state sec­tors to lo­cate the tech­no­crat­ic and ad­min­is­tra­tive skills to im­ple­ment poli­cies. Would-be ap­pointees to state boards will have to be screened for trans­paren­cy to en­sure they have the req­ui­site skills.

Maybe the of­fice of the head of State, the Pres­i­dent of the re­pub­lic, can re­ceive rec­om­men­da­tions from any­where and any­one for the boards and oth­er po­si­tions in the state bu­reau­cra­cy. This will sure­ly pre­vent elect­ed politi­cians from play­ing games with board ap­point­ments and re­duce dra­mat­i­cal­ly nepo­tism and ap­point­ments based on vul­gar cri­te­ria such as race and par­ty mem­ber­ship.

These are not con­crete pro­pos­als, more an as­ser­tion that the sys­tem we now op­er­ate has en­gen­dered con­flict, en­cour­aged cor­rup­tion, in­com­pe­tence and eth­nic and racial cleav­ages. The need there­fore is to re­place it with ideas for or­gan­i­sa­tion of the State in the mod­ern era, and an at­tempt to counter the pe­cu­liar prob­lems of this State. This col­umn al­so at­tempts to stim­u­late sen­si­ble dis­cus­sion among read­ers.