As the COP attempts to move forward with its "new politics" under new leadership, it is as good a time as any to try and understand the concept as espoused by its founding father.Winston Dookeran's new politics-openness and transparency, fairplay and justice in governance-can only be an ideal, an aspiration, for the reality of politics is about acquiring power and influence through manipulation, craftiness and shrewdness et al.When the ol' Basdeo Panday was talking about politics having a morality of its own, this is what he meant, for politics as a means to power has its own set of rules, its own accepted patterns of behaviour related to the effective manoeuvring of people and situations to one's advantage or to that of the organisation he/she heads. And such rules are often at variance, indeed often in contradiction to the conventional rules of fairplay, justice and transparency which Dookeran's new politics seems to be all about.This is the contradiction that often makes good men bad politicians of which Brutus in Shakespeare's great play Julius Caesar is the prime example. At the end of the play, Antony describes Brutus as "the noblest Roman of them all," but Brutus was dead because of his apolitical stance towards Caesar's assassination and Antony was alive and victorious because he was able, first, to manoeuvre the crowd and then the subsequent military situation to his advantage.
Dookeran's new politics applauded the former Energy Minister's independence but that may have contributed to her removal and Prakash Persad's "principled" stance was a party's position but by his own admission he is suffering because of it.In both instances, these behaviours are laudable by conventional ethical standard which the "new politics" of the COP symbolises, but they both detract from the collective responsibility which the politics demands, whatever the private conscience.The COP must be less idealistic, less illusory and more realistic about its politics, and even as it sets high moral and ethical standards of behaviour as an upper benchmark, it must seek to define itself within the People's Partnership by continuously working the available opportunities to its advantage as with Nicole Dyer, until it can stand up from a position of strength and call for parity. This is not to submit but to show good political common sense.
Dr Errol Benjamin
Via e-mail
