Labour Minister Errol McLeod, at the foundation launch of the Movement for Social Justice (May 12) told a gathering of local and international trade union comrades that he is no longer his own boss and, "for the time being I'll try to bat in my crease." This former Oilfields Workers Trade Union (OWTU) president general said: "It is great to be with you and I am sorry I have to run now. For 21 years, I was my own boss as president general of the OWTU. I am not accustomed to working with a boss."
Saying that it is "not easy these days," McLeod said he was certain that since the delegates arrived in the country, he was sure they had the opportunity to identify "a couple of things that are happening." These words escaped the attention of many of the political analysts and commentators who are considered the doyen of the nation's intelligentsia. The Maha Sabha is of the opinion that McLeod and others who think like him have the Kamla Persad-Bissessar's People's Partnership Government moving from one internal bush fire to another almost on a weekly basis. There are those who are currently located in the corridors of power but are unaccustomed to being part of an organisation.
In the recent history of the PP Government there are too many unsettling examples of this type of individualism within what should be a collective approach. What is being manifested is a confrontation of individualism vs collectivism. Dr Andrew Bernstein stated that "collectivism is the political theory that states that the will of the people is omnipotent, an individual must obey; that society as a whole, not the individual, is the unit of moral value...Collectivism is the application of the altruist ethics to politics."
This has been the position of Mrs Persad-Bissessar since the internal elections of the United National Congress and it continues in the office of Prime Minister. Yet we have ministers who wish to impose their own individual values over that of the society and of the Cabinet.
Finance Minister Winston Dookeran has publicly declared the economic challenges that face the Government, Senator David Abdulah, an MSJ representative, joined protesters against the Government.
Abdulah, also president of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions, stated that the Government should not be afraid to run a deficit to increase wages given the current economic conditions for consumers. He states that though there may be an initial deficit, income will return to the Government through increased activity and spending. This has not been the position of the Government.
The ongoing saga of ex-Senator Mary King concerning her family-operated business being awarded a contract under her ministry, is a continuation of this assertion of individualism over the collective. Mary King, in another incarnation, was the boss-lady of Transparency International, making pronouncements on all suspicious acts of government. She was also an independent senator as well as a management consultant.
With these credentials it was only natural that she was courted by the Congress of the People, who soon recruited her in one of its many intellectual forums that tried to attract mass political attention. The individual assertion of self-righteousness assumed obscene proportions with the Mary King incident where, with the whole affair in the public domain and incurring an unrelenting and damaging assault on the People's Part- nership Government image, King steadfastly clung to an innocence which she and Minister Dookeran alone saw. Minister King refused to do the honourable thing by tendering her resignation immediately to the Prime Minister.
Instead, Senator King was prepared to endure public odium as her COP colleague, Minister Anil Roberts, shouted loudly and repeatedly from every media perch that she should go. Eventually the former corruption buster had to be fired by the Prime Minister. Nizam Mohammed, former chairman of the Police Service Commission and another COP nominee, provided another instance of public distraction against the PP Government. Similarly, Senator Vasant Bha-rath, formerly of the rejected faction of the UNC led by the embit- tered Basdeo Panday, was in a virtual all-out confrontation with the Minister of Housing and the Environment, Dr Roodal Moonilal. The individualism of Bharath appears to supersede the collective policy position of Dr Moonilal. Bharath braved being dis- missed as a government senator as he thumbed his nose at the administration and joined farmers protesting against the Government. Bharath perhaps was emboldened to take this position given the fact that his colleague in the Senate, David Abdulah, had gotten away with similar activities.
And now we have Makandal Daaga of the Black Power Movement that created havoc in the 1970 uprising proclaiming, "There is too much corruption and people are stealing money as though they invented it. It seems as though the rich have taken a vow to thief, thief, thief." This is a government paid ambassador attacking a most influential section of the population (Guardian, May 16). The Maha Sabha calls upon the Prime Minister to begin demanding discipline or remove those ministers and state representative senators who do not adhere to the principle of collective responsibility.
Satnarayan Maharaj is the
secretary general of the
Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha