It is the first time in T&T, and prob­a­bly the Caribbean, that the stag­ing of po­lit­i­cal de­bates to se­lect the leader of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty is be­ing held. It gives a new mo­men­tum to our pol­i­tics. It is al­so an­oth­er port­fo­lio in the sys­tem of coali­tion pol­i­tics which the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), led by out­go­ing leader Win­ston Dook­er­an, has in­ject­ed. The sys­tem of po­lit­i­cal de­bates is rem­i­nis­cent of the ear­ly Greek pe­ri­od when the lead­ers and com­mu­ni­ty thinkers would as­sem­ble in the city and dis­cuss is­sues fac­ing the pop­u­lace, and seek so­lu­tions. From that pe­ri­od and pro­ceed­ings un­fold­ed democ­ra­cy, that is, par­tic­i­pa­tion by the peo­ple in the run­ning of their own af­fairs.

But it was in the tele­vised US pres­i­den­tial de­bates in 1960 be­tween then Vice-Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon and the young and dy­nam­ic John F Kennedy that po­lit­i­cal de­bates have their gen­e­sis, even though they were na­tion­al de­bates for the pres­i­den­cy, and not for par­ty lead­er­ship. These de­bates con­tin­ue to be a ref­er­ence point in mod­ern-day pol­i­tics. The COP has ig­nit­ed a new for­mat, a new dy­nam­ic, and a new em­pow­er­ment to the lo­cal po­lit­i­cal sys­tem with the in­tro­duc­tion of de­bates to choose the new leader of the par­ty. The lead­er­ship can­di­dates are: Prakash Ra­mad­har, in­cum­bent deputy po­lit­i­cal leader and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs; Anil Roberts, Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs; Ver­non de Li­ma, vice-chair­man; and Nali­ni Di­al. The ra­dio and tele­vi­sion de­bates have come to stay and would be a much need­ed ad­di­tion to our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prac­tices and tra­di­tions.

The word is out that there is a grow­ing ac­cep­tance that the tra­di­tion­al ap­proach­es of gov­er­nance and lead­er­ship have with­ered away. Vot­ers have lost faith not on­ly in the gov­er­nance process but al­so in politi­cians them­selves, and there must be an av­enue to reignite the pas­sion among the peo­ple. De­bates must be­come our bright­est bea­con for free­dom and democ­ra­cy here and else­where. At the end of these nine de­bates, the tasks ahead for the new leader would not be easy or would they bring glo­ry, but the new leader must pro­vide an­oth­er path­way to gov­er­nance, and not par­ti­san pol­i­tics.

For­mer Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter Per­ci­val Pat­ter­son, in the fore­word in the pub­li­ca­tion Pow­er, Pol­i­tics and Per­for­mance, joint­ly writ­ten by Dook­er­an and Prof Man­fred D Jantzen, writes: "As we com­plet­ed the first decade of the 21st mil­len­ni­um, this is in­deed the mo­ment to es­pouse bold con­cepts which ex­tend the fron­tiers of our knowl­edge, that al­so re­flect a full ap­pre­ci­a­tion of what is es­sen­tial to fash­ion new po­lit­i­cal mod­els, en­gen­der change and deep­en the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process."

Paras Ra­moutar

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