A decade short of a cen­tu­ry, for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day wax­es po­et­ic on his life thus far. In a wide-rang­ing in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, he delves in­to the caus­es of di­vi­sions in so­ci­ety, what is need­ed to deal with the present crime scourge, his thoughts on the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions and his cur­rent views on the par­ty he found­ed, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). He shares his thoughts on the coun­try’s in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate, the Ju­di­cia­ry, con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, Se­nior Coun­sel ti­tle, and cre­at­ing a peace of mind. This is Part 1.

Q: Your fa­mous quotes as a po­lit­i­cal leader and Prime Min­is­ter have been “If you see me and a li­on fight­ing, don’t feel sor­ry for me, feel sor­ry for the li­on,” and “Pol­i­tics has a moral­i­ty of its own,” do you to­day, at 90, still stand by these?

A: I still stand by my state­ment that “pol­i­tics has its own moral­i­ty.” How­ev­er, with re­spect to the first ques­tion there has been a slight change. “If you see me and a li­on fight­ing, pray to God that the li­on has no teeth.”

At age 90, you have man­aged to over­come many chal­lenges–health, in­car­cer­a­tion, the par­ty which you found­ed be­ing ‘hi­jacked’, what would you say has been the most chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion you had to face?

None so hard as the strug­gle to re­move from our beloved land the pol­i­tics of racial/eth­nic and oth­er dele­te­ri­ous di­vi­sions in so­ci­ety.

Did grow­ing up in St Julien Vil­lage pre­pare you for the path you took as an adult and the life you are liv­ing to­day?

My par­ents were peas­ant farm­ers. Among oth­er crops, we had some sug­ar cane. My fa­ther had bought a mule to take the canes to the scale yard. Among my many chores was to clean that filthy, stink­ing mule pen day af­ter day. I ab­horred that chore and day af­ter day I won­dered how I could pos­si­bly get out of this bur­den. Af­ter much thought, I came to the con­clu­sion that the an­swer was ed­u­ca­tion. I think that is why when I went abroad to study I pur­sued so many dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines.

Were you sub­ject­ed to racial slurs in Eng­land and how did you han­dle it?

When I went to Lon­don in 1957, I had no mon­ey and had to be ac­com­mo­dat­ed by a friend. I worked as a labour­er on some build­ing sites, as an elec­tri­cian mate, and as a clerk at the Lon­don Coun­ty Coun­cil and as an ac­tor. Most of the peo­ple were kind and con­sid­er­ate, and at that lev­el, I ex­pe­ri­enced very lit­tle dis­crim­i­na­tion. But that was not al­ways the case. On one oc­ca­sion when I was look­ing for a room to rent, I saw a no­tice in a shop win­dow and I phoned the land­la­dy who con­firmed that the room was still va­cant. I went to the ad­dress giv­en and rang the door­bell. When the land­la­dy opened the door and saw me she screamed and slammed the door in my face. Had I read the ad­ver­tise­ment care­ful­ly I would have no­ticed the ad­di­tion: “No blacks and dogs al­lowed.” There were sim­i­lar in­stances dur­ing my nine years in Lon­don.

When you came back to Trinidad, did you con­sid­er your­self a rad­i­cal or a pa­tri­ot for change?

Not at all. In 1965 I came home to vis­it my fam­i­ly be­fore pro­ceed­ing to Del­hi to take up a Com­mon­wealth schol­ar­ship to do post­grad­u­ate study at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Del­hi. But I at­tend­ed a few meet­ings of the labour move­ment that was strug­gling against the in­tro­duc­tion of the In­dus­tri­al Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Act (ISA). I was so caught up with that strug­gle that I aban­doned my schol­ar­ship and nev­er turned back.

What made you leave law prac­tice to get in­to pol­i­tics?

Hav­ing been caught up in the work­ers’ strug­gle I de­cid­ed to stop talk­ing and go in­to the trench­es with them which land­ed me in con­fronta­tion with the po­lice, jail and oth­er abus­es. I did ap­pear for some unions in the In­dus­tri­al Court which was es­tab­lished un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, the suc­ces­sor to the ISA.

Flashback November 2019: Then president Paula-Mae Weekes presents former prime minister Basdeo Panday with his Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of T&T.

Courtesy UTT

Do you be­lieve that as a long-stand­ing at­tor­ney, you should have been be­stowed the Se­nior Coun­sel ti­tle?

No. I un­der­stood that the con­cept of “Silk” was a means of recog­nis­ing at­tor­neys-at-law who had long-stand­ing bril­liance and ex­cel­lence at the Bar. I do not think the ward was for mere sur­vival at the Bar and I did not de­serve it.

As a trade union leader for so many years, how will you de­scribe the coun­try’s in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate at this time, and what ad­vice would you give to trade union lead­ers?

The In­dus­tri­al Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Act has vir­tu­al­ly killed the tra­di­tion­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ee. The act re­moved the tra­di­tion­al pow­er struc­ture be­tween the work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by the trade unions to take tra­di­tion­al in­dus­tri­al ac­tions, such as strikes, go-slows, demon­stra­tions etc, in the event of a dis­pute, and the pow­er of the em­ploy­er to lock out the work­ers. That bal­ance of pow­er usu­al­ly end­ed in a res­o­lu­tion of the dis­pute. The suc­ces­sor In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act changed the pow­er re­la­tion­ship be­tween em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ee by in­sist­ing that all in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions dis­putes be re­ferred to the In­dus­tri­al Court, so forc­ing the trade union lead­ers to be­come “lawyers” or pay­ing high-priced lawyers to rep­re­sent them. The em­ploy­er be­ing in a bet­ter fi­nan­cial po­si­tion to em­ploy ex­pen­sive lawyers changed the pow­er struc­ture be­tween em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ee to the detri­ment of the lat­ter ... the move­ment has been robbed of its tra­di­tion­al pow­er to bat­tle with the em­ploy­ers for bet­ter con­di­tions for the work­ers they rep­re­sent­ed. In so do­ing the par­ties were in an equal pow­er re­la­tion­ship, with the work­ers hav­ing the pow­er to strike and the em­ploy­er hav­ing the pow­er to lock­out. The par­ties were in a bal­anced pow­er re­la­tion­ship. That is no longer the case.

The In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act has de­stroyed the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the union and em­ploy­er. The lead­ers of the trade unions must now re­sort to the In­dus­tri­al Court, pre­tend­ing to be lawyers, or hav­ing to hire ex­pen­sive lawyers to rep­re­sent them. The tra­di­tion­al pow­er re­la­tion­ship be­tween em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ee no longer ex­ists. The on­ly way for­ward is for the work­ers to unite and ob­tain po­lit­i­cal pow­er in or­der to re-es­tab­lish a new pow­er re­la­tion­ship be­tween em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ee.

Former government minister Jack Warner and former prime minister Basdeo Panday embrace during a function hosted by Chaguanas West MP Ganga Singh at Passage to Asia Restaurant, Chaguanas, in December 2019.

SHASTRI BOODAN

In your po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, you made many good friends and some en­e­mies. Who do you con­sid­er to be your very good po­lit­i­cal friends and your po­lit­i­cal en­e­mies?

Very good po­lit­i­cal friends were few; po­lit­i­cal en­e­mies were many. Such is the na­ture of pol­i­tics. When I left elec­toral (or rather when pol­i­tics let me) and was free of the bur­den of Gov­ern­ment I had the time to turn my at­ten­tion to oth­er im­por­tant mat­ters such as the mean­ing of, and the search for hap­pi­ness. I re­alised that to have peace of mind, the high­est form of hap­pi­ness, one has got to get rid of ha­tred, bit­ter­ness, en­vy, greed, spite, mal­ice and such dele­te­ri­ous ten­den­cies. In or­der to achieve this, I con­cep­tu­al­ly con­vert­ed all my en­e­mies in­to friends. That has made me a very hap­py per­son.

You have been ve­he­ment­ly clam­our­ing for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, what pre­vent­ed you from im­ple­ment­ing this un­der your tenure? What were the ob­sta­cles or chal­lenges?

I am con­vinced that our Con­sti­tu­tion, which is based on the West­min­ster mod­el, is to­tal­ly un­suit­ed to us. We are a small so­ci­ety liv­ing in cru­cible-like con­di­tions. Our fears, our hopes, and our as­pi­ra­tions are not the same as the British. If the func­tion of a con­sti­tu­tion is to en­sure the great­est hap­pi­ness to the great­est num­ber of our cit­i­zens, then our Con­sti­tu­tion has failed mis­er­ably so to do. Our Con­sti­tu­tion must have re­gard for our own hopes, our fears, our as­pi­ra­tions, and the fierce­ly di­vid­ed na­ture of our so­ci­ety.

In or­der to peace­ful­ly in­tro­duce a new Con­sti­tu­tion for T&T there must be a vote in the Par­lia­ment of not less than a three-quar­ters ma­jor­i­ty for some claus­es, and for some claus­es a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty. We did not have such a ma­jor­i­ty and there­fore could not re­form the Con­sti­tu­tion. In the his­to­ry of T&T, on­ly three prime min­is­ters had such a ma­jor­i­ty. They were Dr Er­ic Williams, ANR Robin­son and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Nei­ther of them want­ed to change the Con­sti­tu­tion. They pre­ferred to main­tain the pol­i­tics of race.

Former prime ministers Patrick Manning and Basdeo Panday at Presentation College Reunion in 2010.

Do you see hope for T&T with the two ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties?

NO.

In March, the DPP dis­con­tin­ued the 18-year-old cor­rup­tion charge against you and your wife, Oma, for al­leged­ly re­ceiv­ing £25,000 from busi­ness­men Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Car­los John in re­la­tion to the Pi­ar­co Air­port project, do you think the mat­ter took too long in court and how would you de­scribe the state of the Ju­di­cia­ry in T&T?

It was an in­tol­er­a­ble bur­den for me and my fam­i­ly to en­dure for so many years. I pity the many hun­dreds of in­no­cent peo­ple who have wait­ed, and some who are still wait­ing for so long to es­tab­lish their in­no­cence. The Ju­di­cia­ry should not have been de­prived of the fa­cil­i­ties re­quired to en­able them to per­form their sa­cred func­tions.

PM Row­ley has said pub­licly that Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bises­sar can’t es­cape the Pi­ar­co air­port scan­dal, do you think that as PM at the time this project start­ed that you should shoul­der some blame?

The par­lia­men­tary records will show that when the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Patrick Man­ning ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of cor­rup­tion with re­spect to the air­port, the en­tire project was hand­ed over to the Na­tion­al In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NIPDEC) an in­de­pen­dent en­ti­ty, to build the air­port. If I am not mis­tak­en, I be­lieve that the Privy Coun­cil held that al­le­ga­tions against mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

Flashback April 2010: Basdeo Panday, centre, leaves Port-of-Spain Magistrates’ Court with his wife, Oma, left, and daughter Mickela.