I con­tin­ue from last week’s col­umn, which sur­veyed the state of po­lit­i­cal and so­cial con­flict that has re­tard­ed and placed in dan­ger all forms of de­vel­op­ment here.

To do so, I am sug­gest­ing we re­flect for a mo­ment on the in­hu­man, geno­ci­dal state of war which ex­ists out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go and its al­ready hor­ren­dous and geno­ci­dal im­pact on glob­al hu­man­i­ty. But in do­ing so, I point read­ers to con­sid­er how the in­ter­nal war with­in our bound­aries has and con­tin­ues to stymie the na­tion from achiev­ing some­thing close to our best pos­si­bil­i­ties.

The po­lit­i­cal wars in T&T fought by the two ma­jor par­ties (PNM and the UNC) have di­vid­ed the coun­try in­to com­bat­ive halves of vot­ing blocs along the lines of race and po­lit­i­cal trib­al af­fil­i­a­tion.

The par­ties and their lead­ers have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly in­cul­cat­ed in their sup­port­ers the most de­struc­tive dis­po­si­tions and habits for na­tion­al co­he­sion and peace­ful co-ex­is­tence.

They and their oli­garchies have cyn­i­cal­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ed and utilised the nat­ur­al af­fil­i­a­tion that mem­bers of the ma­jor­i­ty eth­nic­i­ties have for their an­ces­tral cul­tures and turned them in­to ri­val trib­al forces for­ev­er con­test­ing for ma­te­r­i­al, psy­cho­log­i­cal and hege­mon­ic sta­tus.

At the ex­treme, the politi­cians and their par­ties have caused the tribes to de­fine their best in­ter­ests and ex­is­tence in the so­ci­ety on the ba­sis of which par­ty is in gov­ern­ment and which one is lin­ger­ing in the po­lit­i­cal wilder­ness. The po­lit­i­cal-trib­al-elec­toral con­tests have al­ways been an is­sue to de­ter­mine who gets what when their par­ty is in gov­ern­ment and the oth­er is in op­po­si­tion.

The fact re­mains that nei­ther par­ty has dealt hon­est­ly and with con­vic­tion with what has been agreed to by large chunks of the na­tion, and that one cen­tral trans­for­ma­tion­al need is for ma­jor con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. Even the par­ties and their po­lit­i­cal lead­ers have, at var­i­ous points, ac­knowl­edged that the move­ment to con­struct a new so­ci­ety is need­ed through dy­nam­ic and mean­ing­ful change in the set of rules and reg­u­la­tions that gov­ern the coun­try and so­ci­ety.

Con­ve­nient­ly, though, in keep­ing with my ar­gu­ment that the hold­ing of po­lit­i­cal pow­er by the lead­ers and their par­ties is pri­mar­i­ly about en­sur­ing that their tribes have the pow­er of phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal con­trol over so­ci­ety. The ex­er­cise of the pow­er be­comes even more ar­bi­trary and dan­ger­ous when it’s mixed in with per­son­al ag­gran­dis­e­ment and hubris, de­fined as “a dan­ger­ous cock­tail of over­con­fi­dence, over-am­bi­tion, ar­ro­gance and pride fu­elled by pow­er and suc­cess”.

In prime min­is­te­r­i­al of­fice, Bas­deo Pan­day said, in ef­fect, that no ma­jor re­form of the con­sti­tu­tion was need­ed, just a few read­just­ments in spec­i­fied ar­eas of gov­er­nance. To­wards the end of his ca­reer, when it be­came clear that he was not like­ly to sit in the PM’s chair again, he be­came one of the great­est ad­vo­cates for ma­jor con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

PM Er­ic Williams kicked out the Wood­ing pro­pos­als and in­sti­tut­ed a con­sti­tu­tion which was not one “aimed at break­ing up the PNM ma­jori­ties”. Patrick Man­ning played around with a few ex­per­i­ments which did not find trac­tion with the com­mu­ni­ty, in­clu­sive of the UNC; Row­ley promised on two oc­ca­sions to deal se­ri­ous­ly with the need for re­form, if not trans­for­ma­tion.

To put on a show of at­tempt­ing to ful­fil his promise, PM Kei­th Row­ley made a ges­ture of es­tab­lish­ing a con­sti­tu­tion com­mis­sion, which nev­er had a chance of hav­ing a doc­u­ment ready for se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion.

There has been no re­al in­di­ca­tion from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form is a ma­jor item for her Gov­ern­ment to be oc­cu­pied with.

With­out mean­ing­ful trans­for­ma­tion, the pow­er re­mains in the hands of the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and re­stricts the open­ing of new vis­tas for achiev­ing a sta­tus ap­proach­ing that which will, at min­i­mum, at­ten­u­ate the state of per­pet­u­al war and, at best, cre­ate the ba­sis for a so­ci­ety of po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and so­cial fair­ness and eq­ui­ty with the po­ten­tial for sta­bil­i­ty.

To do so would re­quire the par­ty lead­ers to end their con­spir­a­to­r­i­al wars (elec­tion cam­paign­ing and cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions) against the cit­i­zens, which they de­vised to hold on to pow­er. So too will se­ri­ous con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form re­lease par­ty sup­port bases from the con­trol­ling hold over them by the po­lit­i­cal oli­garchies.

Re­sult­ing from the war, the re­sources of the coun­try–hu­man, cap­i­tal, de­vel­op­men­tal pos­si­bil­i­ties, ed­u­ca­tion, and al­most every­thing else–are dis­tort­ed and dis­trib­uted by geo-trib­al elec­toral cri­te­ria.

When so­ci­ety is faced with a con­di­tion that re­quires po­lit­i­cal and par­lia­men­tary co­op­er­a­tion to counter neg­a­tive prob­lems which may be be­yond the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment of the day, plen­ty of ma­m­aguy pos­tur­ing is en­gaged in, which even­tu­al­ly leads to ex­pand­ed po­lit­i­cal wars.

Those po­lit­i­cal and eth­nic wars im­pede, in in­stances, or even de­stroy any hope of so­lu­tions to prob­lems be­ing agreed up­on in the best in­ter­est of T&T.

There can be no more bur­den­some ex­am­ple of how those in­ter­nal wars, as in the present con­tentions and coun­ters be­tween the two ma­jors re­lat­ing to Venezuela’s Drag­on gas arrange­ment, can work against the best na­tion­al in­ter­est.

The PNM gov­ern­ment was con­demned for pur­su­ing the Drag­on; the UNC is now des­per­ate­ly seek­ing to re­sus­ci­tate the “dead” crea­ture.

To be con­tin­ued.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, and a grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and the St Au­gus­tine In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.