As the mem­o­ry of last night’s In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions be­gins to fade we can awake and re­flect on the lega­cy our na­tion has cre­at­ed since 1962. In a land of lies and bac­cha­nal can any­one re­flect with­out be­ing bur­dened by neg­a­tiv­i­ty? Is in­de­pen­dence of thought pos­si­ble in our dis­course? Can any­one have a ma­ture pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion about pol­i­tics with­out it be­ing dragged in­to the gut­ter?

As a life­long writer and blog­ger, I have had my share of neg­a­tive and tox­ic in­ter­ac­tions with po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned in­di­vid­u­als. One blog­ger called me a “fake Chris­t­ian” for my po­lit­i­cal views, which were crit­i­cal of his par­ty.

An­oth­er fate­ful time, a cer­tain po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist kept post­ing on so­cial me­dia about her high-pay­ing job and boast­ing about her wealth. These ar­ro­gant claims led me to do some open source in­tel­li­gence work on this blog­ger’s back­ground, and I found ab­solute­ly no da­ta to sup­port her claims. All C-suite ex­ec­u­tives and high­er-lev­el man­age­ment will be men­tioned on a com­pa­ny’s web­site for pub­lic scruti­ny, and no such web­site or web pres­ence ex­ist­ed to sup­port the bold claims this blog­ger made.

I made a pub­lic post ask­ing about this blog­ger’s ed­u­ca­tion and ev­i­dence of her em­ploy­ment and tagged her in it. In re­sponse, the blog­ger launched in­to a hate­ful tirade and re­fused to pro­vide any ev­i­dence of her bold claims to a high-sta­tus job. I re­spond­ed with a threat of le­gal ac­tion in the tort of Defama­tion since it was high­ly vex­a­tious to at­tack my char­ac­ter for sim­ply ask­ing a ques­tion of some­one who was pur­port­ed­ly putting them­selves up as a po­ten­tial can­di­date for gen­er­al elec­tions.

These tox­ic in­ter­ac­tions are par for the course for on­line po­lit­i­cal dis­cus­sion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. So­cial me­dia ac­tivists use hate­ful and di­vi­sive rhetoric be­cause the pop­u­la­tion re­sponds to it. Any at­tempt at con­struc­tive crit­i­cism of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty is usu­al­ly shut down with ac­cu­sa­tions of sup­port­ing the oth­er side, and if your so­cial me­dia post gets enough trac­tion, a few po­lit­i­cal­ly paid blog­gers will join and throw some racist com­ments in­to the mix and com­plete­ly de­stroy any hope of pos­i­tive dis­course.

It is my view that the peo­ple of T&T do not un­der­stand how to op­er­ate in a democ­ra­cy oth­er than stain­ing their fin­gers in the elec­toral booth. A healthy democ­ra­cy thrives on de­bate, dis­cus­sion and re­flec­tion. Poli­cies put for­ward by politi­cians should be cri­tiqued by both ex­perts and peo­ple with lived ex­pe­ri­ence to en­sure that every­one’s in­ter­est is pro­tect­ed from pos­si­ble harm. Whistle­blow­ers who ex­pose cor­rup­tion should be pro­tect­ed, but in­stead they are vil­i­fied.

The cur­rent dis­pute in­side the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment is a use­ful test of whether we can hold a se­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion. The San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning has raised con­cerns about his for­mer con­stituen­cy chair hold­ing mul­ti­ple par­ty po­si­tions at once, com­plained that he was cut out of the con­stituen­cy’s own com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and asked the na­tion­al lead­er­ship to step in. He has since gone fur­ther and al­leged that a cor­rupt and crim­i­nal el­e­ment ex­ists with­in his par­ty, and that the lead­er­ship has been un­able or un­will­ing to ad­dress it. Par­ty chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les replied that Man­ning ig­nored in­ter­nal pro­ce­dures and cast un­fair as­per­sions. Two ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers re­signed, then the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive it­self went.

What is strik­ing is how quick­ly the re­sponse be­came about loy­al­ty rather than sub­stance. The ques­tions Man­ning raised are le­git­i­mate ones for any po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion. Should one per­son hold three se­nior par­ty of­fices at the same time? Should a sit­ting MP be locked out of his own con­stituen­cy group? Should com­plaints raised in­ter­nal­ly over sev­er­al months go unan­swered? Those are gov­er­nance ques­tions that should be raised in any healthy democ­ra­cy.

Man­ning seems to be on a quest to re­form his par­ty, which is im­por­tant; a weak op­po­si­tion will mean weak­er de­bates in Par­lia­ment that neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the qual­i­ty of leg­is­la­tion pro­duced.

The great re­form­ers Mar­tin Luther (1517) and Rev. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. (1968) both faced se­ri­ous back­lash for ques­tion­ing the sta­tus quo. Man­ning’s quest may re­sult in ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion from some cir­cles of the par­ty. Rev. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. was pushed out of the Na­tion­al Bap­tist Con­ven­tion due to his po­lit­i­cal ac­tivism; sim­i­lar­ly, Man­ning may end up as an out­sider un­til this mat­ter re­solves.

How­ev­er Man­ning’s out­sider sta­tus may be to his ben­e­fit, it will make him in­de­pen­dent and more able to think clear­ly about his par­ty’s fu­ture.

Re­gard­less of the out­come, I wish Man­ning the best on his quest. I do hope that we can have a wider dis­cus­sion on re­duc­ing the lev­el of tox­i­c­i­ty in our po­lit­i­cal dis­course. Blog­gers for the UNC, PNM and third par­ty in­de­pen­dent com­men­ta­tors should try to el­e­vate dis­cus­sion be­yond the usu­al an­gry and hate­ful rhetoric. Hope­ful­ly, cit­i­zens can al­so try to en­gage with more diplo­mat­ic and thought-pro­vok­ing con­tent in­stead of the usu­al fare of bac­cha­nal and chaos that per­vades so­cial me­dia.

In clos­ing I en­cour­age read­ers to move be­yond the tox­i­c­i­ty and en­gage in in­de­pen­dent think­ing, not neg­a­tiv­i­ty.