Through­out his­to­ry the "grass­roots" have al­ways been ex­ploit­ed by politi­cians in their quest for pow­er. Bru­tus cap­tures this idea well in Shake­speare's Julius Cae­sar in at­tempt­ing to jus­ti­fy his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the on­com­ing as­sas­si­na­tion of Cae­sar, sug­gest­ing that "'tis a com­mon proof/That low­li­ness (grass­roots) is young am­bi­tion's lad­der,/Where to the climber up­ward turns his face;/But when he once at­tains the ut­most round,/He then un­to the lad­der turns his back,/Looks in­to the clouds, scorn­ing the base de­grees (grass­roots)/By which he did as­cend" (Act2 Sc1 20-26).

As far as our sit­u­a­tion goes, politi­cians use our own grass­roots in sim­i­lar fash­ion, well aware of their pow­er to de­ter­mine who holds the reins or not by the sheer force of their num­bers, but know­ing al­so that all that it takes to gain their undy­ing loy­al­ty are ten days or a ham­per, a smile or the promise of a small con­tract from their MP, or some oth­er such crumb. But this pow­er of the ex­ploit­ed grass­roots is slow­ly chang­ing for there is an­oth­er group emerg­ing, the new "in­tel­li­gentsia" which is pre­pared to in­ter­ro­gate the re­al agen­das of politi­cians and make in­formed de­ci­sions about them and they will hold sig­nif­i­cant sway for the fu­ture. The COP as a mix of mid­dle class vot­ers cross­ing eth­nic lines has been one such group able to wield such in­flu­ence, as it tried to move away from the tra­di­tion­al race-based pol­i­tics in­to a "new pol­i­tics" of par­tic­i­pa­tion and trans­paren­cy. It is on­ly the UNC fa­nat­ic who will not ad­mit that de­spite its rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber, the COP, in be­ing able to at­tract an in­tel­li­gent eth­ni­cal­ly-mixed mid­dle class, was a po­tent fac­tor in tilt­ing the bal­ance in favour of the UNC and the en­su­ing Part­ner­ship against an es­sen­tial­ly "eth­nic" grass­roots PNM.

An­oth­er such group has re­vealed it­self in the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions. The 20 per cent turnout in these elec­tions would have been ba­si­cal­ly the "eth­nic" UNC grass­roots herd­ed in­to a forced loy­al­ty in the usu­al way by politi­cians, which may ac­count for the ob­vi­ous­ly par­ty-spon­sored-"slate" vic­to­ry while a few good men and women, not on such slates but with more than enough ca­pa­bil­i­ty, were dumped along the way. But the new in­tel­li­gentsia spoke in these elec­tions, though in a dif­fer­ent way, let­ting their voic­es be heard in their si­lence that they were not hap­py with the Gov­ern­ment, which may ac­count for the in­sight­ful re­sponse of Fuad and Jack that this dis­en­chant­ment should be in­ter­ro­gat­ed with ur­gency. This PP Gov­ern­ment would not want to go in­to a na­tion­al elec­tion in three years time de­pend­ing on its tra­di­tion­al grass­roots sup­port while this new and grow­ing in­tel­li­gentsia vac­il­lates, wait­ing in the wings to make a de­ci­sion be­tween a gov­ern­ment which seems to con­tin­ue with the "same ol', same ol'" and pos­si­bly a re-en­er­gised PNM or some oth­er such en­ti­ty, new or oth­er­wise. Jack and his ex­ec­u­tive must re­mem­ber this new in­tel­li­gentsia in the form of the COP in the last elec­tions and the dif­fer­ence it made to who holds the reins of pow­er.

Dr Er­rol Ben­jamin

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