By this time next week, a government of our choice would have been elected in T&T--barring any urgent drama associated with the current season or the pandemic.
As discussed here previously, we are not the only ones to have ventured onto electoral terrain in the midst of the COVID-19 challenge. In the Caribbean alone, we have witnessed contests in Anguilla, Dominican Republic, Guyana, St Kitts & Nevis and Suriname.
True, Guyana went to the polls on March 2 at the early onset of the virus there, but contention over the results was resolved in court and subsequently at the Guyana Election Commission only on Sunday. So, while election day was not seriously affected by COVID-19, the overall elections process occurred under, and was affected by, pandemic conditions.
The other four all had elections under the cover of special arrangements arising from the virus.
Three of them experienced changes in government--Anguilla, Dominican Republic and Suriname. The ruling Team Unity government in St Kitts and Nevis held on to office, election petitions notwithstanding.
I have previously attempted to explain how the mechanics of these elections had been affected by COVID-19 safeguards, but not spent any time on how the pandemic may have impacted the outcomes.
As Monday approaches, and as the campaigning enters the homestretch, I think it would be worthwhile to consider a few points.
The first is that while incumbency may have the benefit of a record of generally positive mitigative public health measures, it also bears the undeniable stamp of economic decline and stagnation and all this implies for general social and economic wellness. Desi Bouterse paid the price for this in an already economically depressed Suriname, as did Gonzalo Castillo’s PLD in the Dominican Republic.
The second point is that while state management of the medical challenge (in the absence of crisis conditions) makes for interesting campaign fodder--including a level of gross public silliness--the intrinsic connection between a pandemic and medium to long-term national development cannot be ignored.
Because of this, reasonable people are constantly compelled to consider the ubiquity or absence of pandemic nuanced initiatives in the design and presentation of campaign promises, manifestos and proposed programmes of development.
This is particularly the case since it is an indisputable truth of our time that the coronavirus pandemic will be with us in measures not of weeks or months, but of years. This has long passed the stage of COVID-denial and scepticism, outlandish conspiracy and/or superstition.
There are no aliens or micro-chips or demonic violations, just humans and a virus and everything in between that joins or seeks to unjoin the two--with science hopefully incarnate as personal and communal knowledge and behaviour.
In this context, politics prevail in this era purely to bridge the gap between public intervention and personal action--as an instrument or tool, not as a treatment nor a cure.
That is the job of science. It is the duty of politics to ensure the scientific imperatives are met and to consider a so-called “balance” between lives and livelihoods.
As I’ve said, we have not been the only ones to pass this way. Neither has it been a completely unique set of circumstances in the modern era.
We were somewhere near here before in the face of the HIV pandemic decades ago--denial, ignorance, the absence of science, and a failure to understand vital behavioural connections. HIV has never gone away.
It is thus difficult today to contemplate a political campaign that excises, from its contextual foundations, the fact of a pandemic.
Much of what I have seen and heard from some so far reeks of decided COVID-denial, a lack of scientific foundation, and evident blindness to the new global realities that have resulted.
For instance, there is no rational discussion on the future of the energy sector that does not include the vagaries of global productive capacity and markets in the face of pandemic conditions.
There is no contemplation of ameliorative social measures in the absence of a framework that recognises deepening, systemic inequity--different vessels on the same troubled ocean.
Put this way, there is quite a lot to be ignored between now and next Monday in the midst of the heat and hubris.
In the shadow of looming danger there is sometimes precious little light.