Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

As I give con­sid­er­a­tion to the is­sue of how Trinidad and To­ba­go can emerge out of this his­tor­i­cal trap of racial di­vi­sive­ness and in­ca­pac­i­ty in gov­ern­ment, my best pro­jec­tion is to sug­gest that fo­cus be placed on the Gen Z, those who are in the age brack­et of 14 to 29 years old, to lead the way for­ward. Why? Sim­ply put, the po­lit­i­cal gen­er­a­tions of the im­me­di­ate pre and post-In­de­pen­dence eras have deep scars which pre­vent them from suc­ceed­ing.

This “wound­ed­ness”, as Leroy Clark de­scribed it, has had the ef­fect of in­fect­ing the lead­ers and their par­ties with grudges, grous­es, scores to set­tle with in­di­vid­u­als and se­lect­ed groups, and per­son­al out­stand­ing ob­jec­tives to be achieved; so wound­ed, they have not been able to achieve the re­al needs of the so­ci­ety/na­tion.

The re­al­i­ty which stares us in our faces is that lead­ers of the two ma­jor par­ties have shown them­selves in­ca­pable of meet­ing the chal­lenges of the so­ci­ety, econ­o­my and poli­ty.

One, their in­abil­i­ty to trans­form the econ­o­my from its his­tor­i­cal de­pen­dence on one crop; in the in­stance of T&T, it’s the en­er­gy sec­tor—the on­ly re­al in­no­va­tion be­ing the ini­tial es­tab­lish­ment of Point Lisas, the cre­ation of a nat­ur­al gas in­dus­try, the gas hav­ing been flared for decades be­fore, and the heavy pro­duc­tion of petro­chem­i­cals from which we de­vel­oped world-class se­mi-fin­ished prod­ucts.

Two, the fail­ure by all gov­ern­ments of the last more than 25 years to find so­lu­tions to the mass pro­duc­tion of young crim­i­nals in “this law­less dump”, in­clud­ing the fi­nanciers of the crimes.

How­ev­er, the most se­ri­ous and un­con­quered in­ca­pac­i­ty of our gov­ern­ments has been the in­abil­i­ty to fos­ter co­he­sive­ness in this plur­al so­ci­ety cre­at­ed out of our past. In fact, in their des­per­a­tion to achieve and hold on to pow­er, the par­ties and their lead­ers have widened and deep­ened the con­tes­ta­tions over pow­er and set eth­no-re­li­gious and cul­tur­al groups of peo­ple against each oth­er in their quest for po­lit­i­cal pow­er.

This claim is borne out by the fail­ures of one of the ma­jors in con­junc­tion with a few small par­ties to es­tab­lish and sus­tain coali­tion forces in and out of gov­ern­ment. The oth­er ma­jor, the PNM, has not at­tempt­ed coali­tions, in­sist­ing that “we will go in­to pow­er alone”; and/or stay out of pow­er with­out seek­ing to stitch to­geth­er post-elec­tion for­ma­tions, or to cre­ate pre-elec­tion po­lit­i­cal as­so­ci­a­tions.

These fail­ures have meant that the whole so­ci­ety can­not ben­e­fit from the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits of its mul­ti­cul­tur­al, eth­nic di­ver­si­ty, in­ter­cul­tur­al and re­li­gious add mix­tures. The mod­ern coali­tions, leav­ing out those of the 1940s-1950s, be­gan ex­per­i­ment­ing in the ear­ly 1980s at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el. The move to coali­tions to counter the PNM reached a high point in 1986 when the com­bined Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion re­moved the PNM af­ter 30 long years.

Alas, the coali­tion forces un­did them­selves with­in two years.

Even be­fore that at­tempt, the Unit­ed Labour Front, a gath­er­ing of the ma­jor trade unions and their lead­ers, frag­ment­ed in op­po­si­tion in the Par­lia­ment. The arrange­ment be­tween Pan­day and Robin­son al­so crashed, and so too did the UNC, in pow­er, split in­to pieces when Ma­haraj, Maraj and Su­dama en­sured that Pan­day was forced to call an ear­ly elec­tion, which al­lowed the arch-po­lit­i­cal en­e­my, the PNM, to once again re­gain pow­er.

The Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, struck be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s UNC, labour, NJAC and oth­ers, shat­tered even be­fore its lead­ers could so­lid­i­fy a gov­ern­ment in pow­er. The above and more have gen­er­at­ed quite an amount of po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sive­ness and kept the arch-ri­val PNM in pow­er.

The PNM, which has sworn to “win alone, lose alone”, has had its in­ter­nal con­flicts go­ing back to Williams and Ma­habir, Williams and Hud­son-Phillips, Man­ning and Row­ley and the present, which got ig­nit­ed by Row­ley’s in­ser­tion of Young in­to the lead­er­ship against the rest. An­oth­er Man­ning of this era is en­gaged in con­flict with­in his own con­stituen­cy in a seat his fa­ther made his own for 40-plus years.

With such a back­ground of the two ma­jors and com­bi­na­tions of the par­ties in coali­tion gov­ern­ments and op­po­si­tion, the re­al­i­ty needs to be faced that our gov­ern­ments and op­po­si­tion par­ties in of­fice have failed in the ma­jor post-In­de­pen­dence/Re­pub­li­can pe­ri­ods to counter the ma­jor chal­lenges of In­de­pen­dence as list­ed above.

It must be said too, that the fail­ures have come notwith­stand­ing at least three pe­ri­ods of large sums of rev­enue drawn from oil, gas and petro-chem­i­cals price booms. Was the rev­enue best used to broad­en the eco­nom­ic base, in­clud­ing the con­struc­tion of a sol­id ex­port in­dus­try?

In the con­tem­po­rary pe­ri­od, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has gam­bled on Pres­i­dent Trump as a bene­fac­tor, which is in it­self a heavy and risky punt giv­en the volatil­i­ty of the man and his own ob­jec­tives, which do not usu­al­ly leave room for se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the needs of oth­er coun­tries, even large part­ners such as those in the Eu­ro­pean com­mu­ni­ty and the naval-string as­so­ci­a­tion with Cana­da.

I am not con­tend­ing that the two columns cap­tured all that is rel­e­vant to con­clude on, but they give a sense of the non-achieve­ments. I shall con­tin­ue.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er—free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host, and News Di­rec­tor at TTT; pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad; cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press; grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona, and St Au­gus­tine—In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions