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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Evolving politics driven by people

by

20121106

Af­ter the pub­lic blus­ter­ing (filled with racist and dis­hon­est clam­our­ings) is done with, the Prime Min­is­ter and her Cab­i­net should se­ri­ous­ly con­tem­plate the po­si­tion reached by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment a mere two and a half years since sweep­ing the polls 29 to 12.

The po­lit­i­cal hunter has be­come the hunt­ed. The op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), squan­dered and dis­graced at the May 2010 polls, has been stim­u­lat­ed to new life. Core el­e­ments of the trade union move­ment, which sup­port­ed the hunter in 2010, are mo­bil­is­ing against the Gov­ern­ment it helped to in­stall in of­fice.

Sev­er­al civic groups have joined the cause against what they per­ceive to be en­trenched cor­rup­tion, at best in­com­pe­tence, in Gov­ern­ment and car­ried out with ar­ro­gance.

Among the groups were sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als who would not nor­mal­ly be on the same po­lit­i­cal street with the PNM, maybe a dif­fer­ent form of coali­tion pol­i­tics is emerg­ing here which makes non­sense of tra­di­tion­al par­ty pol­i­tics. It could be a pol­i­tics in which peo­ple would be di­rect­ly in­volved to ad­vance the na­tion­al in­ter­est over nar­row par­ty lines and af­fil­i­a­tion.

To a first-hand ob­serv­er in the march through the streets and the ral­ly on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, the PN­Mism of the Williams/Man­ning brand seemed mut­ed. This evolv­ing pol­i­tics dri­ven by peo­ple makes the hyp­o­crit­i­cal and fren­zied screams of those in of­fice that the march was "po­lit­i­cal" seem com­i­cal. Their fee­ble non-dis­cern­ing protests trans­form them in­to po­lit­i­cal di­nosaurs in­ca­pable of see­ing an evolv­ing peo­ple's pol­i­tics.

Sure, the ag­i­ta­tion and mo­bil­i­sa­tion are po­lit­i­cal, what else can they be if they are di­rect­ed at the po­lit­i­cal ac­tions of the Prime Min­is­ter and her Gov­ern­ment? And why should they not be po­lit­i­cal? When the groups that signed the agree­ment at the his­toric Fyz­abad meet­ing were ag­i­tat­ing and mo­bil­is­ing, was that not po­lit­i­cal ac­tion?

But the at­tempt to delig­itimise po­lit­i­cal ac­tion is part of the racist dis­hon­esty men­tioned above and peo­ple from all po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sions should not be dis­tract­ed by it. Pol­i­tics and po­lit­i­cal ac­tion con­trol the pow­er of the State and peo­ple have for too long left pol­i­tics in the hands of par­ty politi­cians who de­fine what pol­i­tics should be about and how po­lit­i­cal ac­tion should be tak­en.

As last week's col­umn il­lus­trat­ed, the po­lit­i­cal trou­bles of the Gov­ern­ment are of its own mak­ing. At the par­ty lev­el, the par­ties have failed to ful­fil the re­quire­ment of the Fyz­abad Ac­cord "to de­vel­op a com­mon pol­i­cy plat­form...and to es­tab­lish mech­a­nisms for the achieve­ment of con­sen­sus."

Those who ar­gued that the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) was in­signif­i­cant and its de­par­ture from the coali­tion would have no con­se­quence for the PP must con­tem­plate again the role be­ing played by the MSJ in mo­bil­i­sa­tion against the Gov­ern­ment.

The To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) is hold­ing fast to the UNC el­e­ment of the Gov­ern­ment to fire off a vol­ley of cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions against the in­cum­bent in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and to pro­vide the TOP with re­sources for the cam­paign. If the TOP does not cap­ture the elec­tions, it would be with­out val­ue to the PP Gov­ern­ment.

The Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) has tak­en to "eat­ing ah food" in­side Gov­ern­ment, its voice of 1970 long stran­gled. For­mer chair­man of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) Joseph Toney was right in say­ing that he lost in the par­ty polls be­cause he was seen as reach­ing out to take hold of the poi­soned chal­ice of a po­lit­i­cal­ly-in­duced brief.

And that re­al­ly is the com­ment of the mem­ber­ship of the COP, they per­ceive their par­ty as hav­ing ex­changed its po­lit­i­cal grav­i­tas to be the moral guid­ing tone of the coali­tion for min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tions and the ben­e­fits of be­ing close to the seat of state pow­er which dis­trib­utes ben­e­fits to the ac­com­mo­dat­ing.

The sit­u­a­tion of the PP Gov­ern­ment is not hope­less but very com­pli­cat­ed and dif­fi­cult to re­trieve. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Cab­i­net have to first over­come the psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma of de­nial that there is a le­git­i­mate threat.

In Freudi­an psy­cho­analy­sis, de­nial is iden­ti­fied as at­tempts by the im­ma­ture mind to ma­nip­u­late, de­ny and dis­tort re­al­i­ty. If al­lowed to fes­ter, de­nial be­comes patho­log­i­cal and leads to what is called "mal­adap­tive be­hav­iours." One ex­am­ple of the de­nial is the in­sis­tence that the Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co has been paid for with the po­lit­i­cal scalp of Her­bert Vol­ney and it is time to "move on."

Even if Sec­tion 34 is re­placed by an­oth­er dis­as­ter, as it seems sure to be giv­en the Gov­ern­ment's dis­po­si­tion to fall on its sword, what is not un­der­stood is that the Resh­mi af­fair, Sec­tion 34 and oth­ers have se­ri­ous­ly un­der­mined the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment and that ero­sion has weak­ened the foun­da­tion of the Gov­ern­ment.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has to come for­ward and demon­strate lead­er­ship. Hid­ing be­hind Jack Warn­er's blus­ter­ing and at­tempts at ma­nip­u­la­tion se­vere­ly erodes her val­ue as a leader. Lead­ers be­come be­hold­en to those they de­pend on to front for them; they are trapped by their po­lit­i­cal sur­ro­gates who make them­selves in­dis­pens­able. In such cir­cum­stances the po­lit­i­cal mus­cles of the leader be­come flab­by and in­ef­fec­tu­al.


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