Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

I thought of con­tin­u­ing to re­flect on a few more ex­am­ples of how the pow­er shift from the North to the South is tak­ing place un­der the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. It’s the par­ty which has its base tra­di­tion­al­ly in Cen­tral and parts of south Trinidad and now with elec­toral part­ners in two seats in the deep south of Trinidad, where his­tor­i­cal­ly the PNM has held dom­i­nance.

How­ev­er, the re­spons­es re­ceived from the pre­vi­ous col­umn in­di­cate there is a clear un­der­stand­ing of the geo-eth­nic par­ty pol­i­tics played by the two ma­jors, the UNC and the PNM, and the even­tu­al shifts at­tempt­ed when in gov­ern­ment.

On this oc­ca­sion, the shift is more or­gan­ised by the UNC, in­clu­sive of a pro­pa­gan­da ma­chin­ery that is con­stant­ly seek­ing ways to di­min­ish, as far as pos­si­ble, the long-term achieve­ments of the par­ty of Dr Er­ic Williams (of the North) through to Kei­th Row­ley, as a means of as­sert­ing the su­pe­ri­or­i­ty of the UNC, the In­do-Trinidad-based par­ty.

Fa­cil­i­ta­tive of the greater pos­si­bil­i­ty of the UNC dom­i­nance this time around is that the par­ty is not as de­pen­dent on its part­ners in gov­ern­ment as it was on the last oc­ca­sion, 2010. The EBC re­sults il­lus­trate that re­al­i­ty in the num­bers, po­lit­i­cal strength, and per­son­al­i­ties of those who formed the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship.

The trade union move­ment is not as locked in as it was last time around and does not have as pow­er­ful a lead­er­ship in­side the par­ty and Gov­ern­ment com­pared to the 2010-2015 term. In this in­stance, the Con­gress of the Peo­ple is miss­ing.

As in­di­cat­ed in last week’s col­umn, the pow­er shift al­so takes place when the Afro-based PNM, with its trib­al strengths along the East-West Cor­ri­dor, its hold in San Fer­nan­do, and parts of the deep South, when it took over from the UNC, as it did in 2015, which by then had been re­duced to its trib­al base.

The re­al­i­ty is that when the trib­al par­ties get in­to gov­ern­ment, they con­cen­trate pow­er and pres­tige in the geopo­lit­i­cal-trib­al parts of the coun­try where their sup­port bases ex­ist.

The is­sue that faces the coun­try and the elec­torate is how to avoid the con­stant at­tempts to shift the pow­er, which the ev­i­dence in­di­cates has a neg­a­tive im­pact on so­ci­ety. Among those neg­a­tives, when ei­ther one of the tribes gets in­to of­fice, is the sense of dis­en­fran­chise­ment adopt­ed by the oth­er to­wards gov­er­nance and the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try. The los­ing tribe con­cludes that gov­er­nance is not in its in­ter­est and so en­gages in dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour to un­der­mine the gov­ern­ment.

“The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Op­po­si­tion is not to make the Gov­ern­ment look good,” was a stat­ed po­si­tion of Bas­deo Pan­day dur­ing his and his par­ty/ies long stints in op­po­si­tion. The PNM’s pol­i­cy has been that it will win or lose alone and there­fore was nev­er oblig­ed when in op­po­si­tion to ad­vance the poli­cies and pro­grammes of the Gov­ern­ment.

It is well-known and com­plained about on the oc­ca­sions of the pow­er shift­ing, ie, that when one par­ty takes over from the oth­er, pro­grammes and projects de­vel­oped by the out­go­ing par­ty worth hun­dreds of mil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars are ig­nored by the in­com­ing par­ty.

Con­verse­ly, when poli­cies and pro­grammes are de­vel­oped by a par­ty in gov­ern­ment sim­ply to meet the needs of a trib­al el­e­ment of the com­mu­ni­ty, it of­ten means that the fund­ing is not put to its op­ti­mal us­age; it is more of a project to re­ward a trib­al base and/or to shore up elec­toral sup­port of the par­ty in pow­er.

One of the most na­tion­al­ly dis­turb­ing and cost­ly as­pects of the trib­al shift­ing around of gov­ern­ment is the de­pri­va­tion of the coun­try of hav­ing its most ca­pa­ble, qual­i­fied, and ex­pe­ri­enced peo­ple in ser­vice to the na­tion.

That starts at the lev­el of the high­est po­lit­i­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive tal­ents in the coun­try, ie, the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic, the Prime Min­is­ter, and Cab­i­net mem­bers, state boards, and the like, as those po­si­tions are de­cid­ed on the ba­sis of par­ty and trib­al loy­al­ty of in­di­vid­u­als.

In this year’s post-elec­tion pe­ri­od, the in­di­ca­tions are clear that, notwith­stand­ing the cam­paign promise to en­tice vot­ers to the pledge of the UNC that “When UNC wins, every­body wins,” that is not the re­al­i­ty. That was il­lus­trat­ed in last week’s col­umn, which de­pict­ed the pen­du­lum swing­ing re­lent­less­ly south­wards with­out a con­cern for what’s in the best in­ter­est of the na­tion.

There­fore, the is­sue/chal­lenge that emerges is how the ob­vi­ous bi­fur­ca­tion of the poli­ty on the ba­sis of a trib­al and nar­row par­ty af­fil­i­a­tion is to be trans­formed.

The chal­lenge that aris­es, there­fore, is how to trans­form a poli­ty that is deeply di­vid­ed along trib­al and nar­row­ly par­ti­san lines—a di­vi­sion made more prob­lem­at­ic by the ab­sence of gen­uine ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion among the par­ties in terms of pol­i­cy and pro­gramme.

In­deed, in this dis­pen­sa­tion, the PNM has charged the UNC with adopt­ing its pro­grammes. That is a con­fes­sion that there is re­al­ly no deep-down di­ver­gence fac­ing the elec­torate seek­ing to elect a gov­ern­ment in­to of­fice but for trib­al and par­ty al­le­giance. One re­sult­ing ef­fect is that one-third of the elec­torate stays away from the polls.

To be con­tin­ued.

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 the St Au­gus­tine In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.