So­ci­ety can­not change if the sta­tus quo is main­tained. That is a sim­ple but pro­found truth that goes to the heart of so­cial, po­lit­i­cal and de­vel­op­ment the­o­ry.

There have been vary­ing lev­els of so­cial, phys­i­cal and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of T&T over the last six decades. Com­pared with our less for­tu­nate neigh­bours, we ap­pear to be very "de­vel­oped" as a na­tion and even so, some of our neigh­bours put us to shame. The prob­lem is that we al­ways seem to go af­ter the low­est com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor to make a com­par­i­son. That is a com­mon ploy of failed lead­ers. A clas­sic ex­am­ple was the re­cent state­ment made by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty that he was work­ing on not let­ting our na­tion­al mur­der rate reach the lev­el of Ja­maica or that made by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance that he saved the na­tion from los­ing free ed­u­ca­tion and health­care by not go­ing to the IMF.

The re­al­i­ty is that, based on the lev­el of oil and gas pro­duc­tion that we have had as a na­tion, we should be com­par­ing our de­vel­op­ment with that of Nor­way and Qatar. By so do­ing, we can then put our progress in­to per­spec­tive.

Cit­i­zens in T&T in 2019, still feel that they are grant­ed favour when on the eve of an elec­tion, they get their roads paved. We con­tin­ue to mark time with road paving pol­i­tics when the de­bate should be evolv­ing to how we make T&T the top five: best places to live; coun­tries to do busi­ness; safest coun­tries; clean­est coun­tries; hap­pi­est coun­tries; most ed­u­cat­ed pop­u­la­tions; low­est ma­ter­nal rates; best pub­lic health­care; most pro­duc­tive agri­cul­tur­al sec­tors; best tourism des­ti­na­tions; most ef­fi­cient pub­lic trans­port sys­tems; green­est and most eq­ui­table so­ci­eties on the plan­et.

We need to be more as­pi­ra­tional but the pol­i­tics have led to a pre­pon­der­ance of hope­less­ness, made man­i­fest by the vary­ing lev­els of vot­er ap­a­thy at both lo­cal and gen­er­al elec­tions.

In­stead of fo­cus­ing on sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives, the Gov­ern­ment of the day is fo­cused on tax­a­tion, try­ing to ex­tract as much mon­ey from the pop­u­la­tion with­out a cor­re­spond­ing in­crease in ser­vice de­liv­ery.

There is al­so an ar­ro­gance that sug­gests that the Gov­ern­ment is en­ti­tled to de­ny cit­i­zens of rights and priv­i­leges on a whim. This be­hav­iour is to­tal­ly at odds with the most fun­da­men­tal ten­ants of democ­ra­cy. It runs afoul of the so­cial con­tract where cit­i­zens on­ly give up rights and priv­i­leges by con­sent, for the gen­er­al good and in­creased se­cu­ri­ty of the na­tion.

Even when poli­cies are meant to ben­e­fit the pop­u­la­tion such as the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na, it ap­pears to be im­ple­ment­ed in a hap­haz­ard, cyn­i­cal way. While de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion will free up the av­er­age cit­i­zen from the in­equitable pros­e­cu­tion for mar­i­jua­na use, it does noth­ing to pre­vent or ease the gang turf war­fare that leads to the na­tion­al in­se­cu­ri­ty we are all sub­ject­ed to. In ad­di­tion, I have heard noth­ing about ed­u­ca­tion and health sup­port that must go hand in hand with such ini­tia­tives.

Laws and poli­cies will al­ways be made to ben­e­fit those who make them, as such, the sta­tus quo of laws and poli­cies will be pre­served un­less there is a fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence of in­flu­en­tial thought at the de­ci­sion-mak­ing lev­el. This can­not be overem­pha­sised.

In­flu­en­tial thought is dif­fer­ent from thought. One can be a mem­ber of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing team such as the Cab­i­net but not have the re­quired in­flu­ence, which is usu­al­ly re­served for an in­ner cir­cle of peo­ple sur­round­ing the Prime Min­is­ter.

The pol­i­tics of T&T, which have tra­di­tion­al­ly de­pend­ed on the clear di­vi­sive lines of eth­nic­i­ty and re­li­gion, have be­come more blurred over time. This is be­cause the younger gen­er­a­tions have bro­ken down these tra­di­tion­al bar­ri­ers of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and so­cial in­ter­ac­tions, lead­ing to a larg­er third con­stituen­cy of think­ing. As a re­sult, the tra­di­tion­al par­ties are find­ing it more dif­fi­cult to cap­ture an out­right ma­jor­i­ty of seats. Ex­am­ples of this in­clude 17-17-2; 18-18, which led to an in­crease of seats and even the present con­fig­u­ra­tion of 18-23. Even the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions have re­sult­ed in a vir­tu­al dead heat of 7-7.

This, I would ar­gue, presents a gen­uine op­por­tu­ni­ty for the third con­stituen­cy to make a re­al im­pact on the na­tion­al agen­da. The think­ing that has emerged from the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions is that small­er par­ties can fo­cus on re­gion­al con­stituen­cies that com­prise large seg­ments of the third con­stituen­cy thinkers who have tra­di­tion­al­ly not ben­e­fit­ed from the tra­di­tion­al grab for the mar­gin­al seats.

The re­gion of Diego Mar­tin is one such group­ing. It is my be­lief and that of those of us in the MND, that the eth­nic, re­li­gious and so­cioe­co­nom­ic mix that is Diego Mar­tin, al­lows for the blos­som­ing of trans­for­ma­tion­al pol­i­tics that can im­pact not on­ly the res­i­dents of Diego Mar­tin but those of the en­tire coun­try. It is my be­lief that in or­der to get in­flu­en­tial thought at the heart of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process it must be ac­com­plished by strong coali­tion part­ner­ships.

I en­cour­age small­er par­ties to adopt this strat­e­gy to force a change of the sta­tus quo, whether it is the PPM in Port-of-Spain, the To­ba­go par­ties or the Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (MND) in Diego Mar­tin, Trinidad and To­ba­go is wit­ness­ing a qui­et but sig­nif­i­cant po­lit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion.

Garvin Nicholas is an at­tor­ney and leader of the Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment.