Planning Minister Dr Bhoe Tewarie, who has been involved in politics going back to Tapia in the 1970s, cannot be so innocent as to believe that in a vigorous democracy the opposition party is there to agree with government policies and draft bills. Democracy, among other things, means that there must be contending views on policies and programmes, giving the population an opportunity to play a discerning and active role in its governance. To do otherwise is for Dr Tewarie to wish upon this country a state in which only the voice of the Government is heard. The Planning Minister must also know that enshrined in the Republican Constitution is the right to freedom of speech. It is a right that is enshrined in the Constitution for the specific purpose that a government cannot wake up one morning and decide to remove such a vital freedom.
In the most vibrant democracies of the day, the US, western Europe, in India, the debates in the Parliament are fierce, parliamentarians coming to blows at times. In the US on occasion there are bills and measures on which all sides of the Congress and Senate decide there should be bipartisanship. Dr Tewarie must know that no government in a robust democracy can expect a free ride so this culture of opposition is not peculiar to T&T. It was the Greek philosopher Aristotle, an elitist and not comfortable with the view that "every cook can govern," who noted that "the basis of a democratic state is liberty." Therefore, the Opposition has the right, even the obligation, to express its views, however contradictory, however difficult they make life for the Government of the day.
His very narrow conception of democracy also contradicts the fact that he was once the principal of the UWI campus in St Augustine, an institution which has the major responsibility of promoting divergent opinions, the contestation of ideas and critical thinking. Is he saying that that kind of vigorous debate is secluded to university campuses? But one of the most worrying aspects of Dr Tewarie's discourse in the Senate was the impression he sought to give that this oppositionist culture is something invented by the present-day PNM. He should have noted that opposition to the former government's policy and practice is what got the People's Partnership into office.
He should also have been able to say very directly that during the time when the elements which make up the PP were in opposition, they too engaged in this "negative" culture of opposition, as he sees it. Fully aware of the politics, Dr Tewarie should also have condemned Basdeo Panday for cultivating this politics of opposition. It was Panday who established that the opposition was not there to make the government look good.
If he wanted to sound credible, he should also have pointed to the fact that it was a UNC government in office which vigorously and deliberately helped to establish the Caribbean Court of Justice, but which today is refusing to join the CCJ as a final court of appeal. Such politics, Dr Tewarie, is the kind which is keeping T&T from advancing. On the issue of having the elected government serve its five-year term, Dr Tewarie, as an educated and informed citizen of the world, must also be aware of the international political currents that are leading to governments being swept from office in both mature democracies and in autocratic regimes.
The reality is that people are not satisfied with the five-second, polling-booth democracy and want to be consulted, or at least have their views considered, in the shaping of the policies that dictate how they live. Democracy can be painful, but both Aristotle and Plato categorised it as the lesser of the evils.