The Gary Griffith broadside at Congress of the People (COP) Leader Winston Dookeran has generated an emotional discussion about the politics of opposition in Trinidad and Tobago and raises questions about whether the country can sustain a third party, operating "in the wilderness."
It has also piqued the interest of rank and file members of the United National Congress (UNC) with some members openly hoping that it’s the end of COP and the return of the prodigals, while others totally oppose discussions with the party.
"Yes we have no choice but to accept those who will be returning to the folds of the UNC, and there will be many," wrote one UNC member on a party Internet chat site in response to another who questioned whether that is the way for the party to go.
"Didn’t we take back Ramesh?" asked another, in reference to the former Attorney General whose break with the party caused the fall of the UNC government in 2000.
But another UNC member was not that forgiving. "Please note that historical evidence indicate that those COP traitors cannot be trusted," he wrote. "Instead these men of ‘integrity’ have to be politically destroyed…Yetming and company have proved that characteristics such as loyalty, respect and commonsense are not part of their personality."
His position was that many of the frontline COP people are political opportunists who "will destroy and humiliate anyone that does not agree with them. They are not team players and hence cannot survive Trinbagonian politics."
The point is UNC members are suspicious of COP leaders but are happy to embrace those who were seduced by COP’s message of new politics and all the other trimmings of its "newness".
The focus of the scores of letters – those who like the idea of discussions with COP as well as those who oppose it – was clear: be cautious, don’t let us down again.
The "again" is an interesting signpost and goes back to 1986 when Basdeo Panday dissolved his United Labour Front (ULF) to merge with other opposition parties to form the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) and handed the leadership of the new party to A.N.R. Robinson.
The "one-love" movement degenerated into an orgy of hate and acrimony once Robinson realized that he could dispense with the Panday faction in the party and still keep a majority in the lopsided 33-3 Parliament.
He was right. Panday left with his "tribe" to form CLUB ’88 under the chairmanship of Dr Rampersad Parasram, which gave birth to the UNC as a populist people’s party dedicated to the proposition that people would join the "crusade", as Basdeo Panday put it, not because of the colour of their skins but by "the content of their minds."
The UNC embraced everyone and eventually reached Whitehall in a coalition with none other that Robinson and his NAR, which had been reduced to a rump Tobago party. Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed!
And perhaps that political pragmatism explains the longevity of both Panday and the movement he heads.
The UNC remains the only party other than the PNM that has withstood the test of time in the country’s politics both in and out of government. Today the question is whether the COP can survive in a game where only two parties have dominated – the PNM and the UNC and its various predecessor organizations. And whether any third party can be useful in representing the views of those opposed to the governing party given the confines of the first-past-the-post electoral politics.
Political analysts, pollsters, and the man-in-the street welcomed the infant COP and wrote off the UNC and its allies. But the campaign and the result on November 5, 2007 General Election demonstrated that the UNC was alive and well, and that it was capable of co-opting other political elements.
Indeed that is the trademark of Panday. His earliest flirtation with politics in 1966 as a candidate of the Workers and Farmers Party (WFP) was a disaster. He belonged to the wrong "tribe", although he had all the other credentials.
When he re-emerged as the new messiah in the plains of Caroni following the death of Bhadase Maraj, the charismatic Hindu/Indian leader, he inherited a constituency that has remained loyal for more than 40 years.
Maraj and Dr Eric Williams set the political rules as far back as 1956 and polarized the country between the two founding races. It remained that way, despite the efforts of high profile members that crossed the racial divide on both sides.
Panday lost his deposit to the candidate of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), the successor party of Maraj’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the only party that survived from the lineup of 10 that faced the PNM in 1956.
The unwritten rules were clear: us and them, us being the governing PNM, the so-called black party, and the DLP, the Indian party. In 1976 when Panday re-entered electoral politics ready to do battle with Eric Williams he knew the idea of an Indian party winning government was as remote as a snowstorm in hell.
As the leader of the Indian base through his inheritance of the sugar workers union from Bhadase Maraj, he saw labour as the vehicle to get him to Whitehall – and it eventually did, 19 years later.
Unrest in the sugar and oil industries became the catalyst for the formation of a mass movement with the mantra "Let those who labour hold the reins." The experiment brought all the major labour groups together and race and ethnicity was to be buried with the DLP, which was the significant third party in the 1976 general election.
The DLP disappeared in the Panday phenomenon but the national unity he had hoped for was a mirage.It was not until 1986 with the NAR that it almost happened.
But NAR was an aberration. While the people were ready for change at all cost – and the PNM under George Chambers had given up the fight – the political philosophies were too far apart for it to happen.
When Panday and Robinson squared off, the atmosphere was almost identical to the bloodbath in the UNC that led to the creation of COP. But there was a fundamental element missing in the equation.
Trinidad and Tobago politics was always based on populism. Eric Williams, Bhadase Maraj and Basdeo Panday each possessed widespread appeal within their constituencies primarily because of their respective personalities. They also commanded their base in a way no other political leader has ever done.
Robinson pulled off the 1986 victory over the PNM not because he commanded the majority; he didn’t. But the nation was ready for change and each leader brought his constituency – Panday, Best, Hudson-Phillips and of course, Robinson. And there was no other party. It was a script that could not fail.
The miscalculation in the COP was that Winston Dookeran, with no onerous political baggage, an excellent track record as Governor of the Central and a former deputy prime minister, could appeal to the invisible voter and the disaffected UNC tribe.
The party built its communication message around that theme but Dookeran lacked the "rootsy" touch that had been ingrained in the nation’s political psyche. And the tribalism emerged to knock the COP off its pedestal.
There is a long list of political parties and their leaders in the nation’s electoral archives that point to the fact that it takes more than a symbol and a message to establish a true presence in the political landscape.
So where does it go from here?
Panday still insists – as he has done all through his political life – that a true national party in opposition is the only one that can make it to government. And he has said over and over again that the nation’s first past the post system is designed to keep one party in power.
It is that "politics of opposition" that the PNM has kept alive to its great benefit, as was demonstrated in the last election. Eric Williams even encouraged people to create political parties so there would be a splintered opposition vote. Ashford Sinanan and his West Indian National Party (WINP) was an example.
And the party established such strong roots during its initial 35 unbroken years in government that it remains in office even when it is not. Robinson and Panday both discovered that there was a PNM governing bureaucracy in place that frustrated their efforts at every turn. And whenever there was a third or any number of other parties it was very comfortable because it had the advantage of incumbency to maintain its hold on power.
The only real challenged to the government was from the Organization for National Reconstruction (ONR) in 1981. Karl Hudson-Phillips was fishing in the PNM pond but in spite of the strong support he got, the PNM remained unshaken and was returned to office with the strongest majority ever.
The ONR became the NAR and later died, though some will argue that it still lives. So too have all movements and parties.
What has survived is an advanced political model of the original Indian party. There are two political bases in Trinidad and Tobago. And it leaves no room for a splintered opposition. In 41 years, no opposition politician or party has challenged Panday and won. And there is a reason.
He built a people’s movement from the ground up. He worked with the people in the trenches. He marched to demand a better deal and was brutalized and jailed, the only national leader who has gone that distance. That is why the constituency he built refuses to desert him.
"You can’t just hand over this constituency to someone," Panday said during the 2007 election campaign. And the evidence is there as Ramesh L. Maharaj, and now Winston Dookeran, have discovered. Not even Panday’s fall from power took away his sheen.
But Panday is ready to retire. Even if his heart tells him no, his body is showing the fatigue after 42 years. And Dookeran is finding out that voters are fickle and unforgiving. So the implosion in the COP – though hushed after the initial public outbursts – is natural, based on the history of opposition politics.
Sustaining a vibrant political movement requires money, which the COP now lacks. And existing in the political wilderness for five years has been fatal for all opposition parties except the UNC and the PNM.
Yet new opposition parties emerge each election season, much to the pleasure of the governing establishment. Like the Shakespearean actor, they come on stage, "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." And then they die. Once "the revels are ended", they consume themselves and disappear.
And so it is today in the COP. Manning and the PNM will remain secure because they are the superior political machine. And until those who find the PNM brand of politics unpalatable agree to unite and dethrone them, the historical machinery cannot be dismantled to allow for a healthy multi-party democracy.
The best starting point for the opposition is what Jack Warner has engineered, an alliance of the opposition. If the COP takes a seat among the others in that alliance, there is hope that from among them a new leader will emerge who will create a new national party in the vision that Panday has had – a coalition of people, coming together for the national good, a tribe based not on gender or ethnicity but for the "content of their minds."
The people, I believe, are ready. But the nagging question that remains is whether those who lead are ready to take them in the right direction.
For now, the politics of opposition remains as it has always been. And Manning and the PNM like nothing better. And who can blame them?
Jai Parasram Toronto, Feb.05, 2008
It has also piqued the interest of rank and file members of the United National Congress (UNC) with some members openly hoping that it’s the end of COP and the return of the prodigals, while others totally oppose discussions with the party.
"Yes we have no choice but to accept those who will be returning to the folds of the UNC, and there will be many," wrote one UNC member on a party Internet chat site in response to another who questioned whether that is the way for the party to go.
"Didn’t we take back Ramesh?" asked another, in reference to the former Attorney General whose break with the party caused the fall of the UNC government in 2000.
But another UNC member was not that forgiving. "Please note that historical evidence indicate that those COP traitors cannot be trusted," he wrote. "Instead these men of ‘integrity’ have to be politically destroyed…Yetming and company have proved that characteristics such as loyalty, respect and commonsense are not part of their personality."
His position was that many of the frontline COP people are political opportunists who "will destroy and humiliate anyone that does not agree with them. They are not team players and hence cannot survive Trinbagonian politics."
The point is UNC members are suspicious of COP leaders but are happy to embrace those who were seduced by COP’s message of new politics and all the other trimmings of its "newness".
The focus of the scores of letters – those who like the idea of discussions with COP as well as those who oppose it – was clear: be cautious, don’t let us down again.
The "again" is an interesting signpost and goes back to 1986 when Basdeo Panday dissolved his United Labour Front (ULF) to merge with other opposition parties to form the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) and handed the leadership of the new party to A.N.R. Robinson.
The "one-love" movement degenerated into an orgy of hate and acrimony once Robinson realized that he could dispense with the Panday faction in the party and still keep a majority in the lopsided 33-3 Parliament.
He was right. Panday left with his "tribe" to form CLUB ’88 under the chairmanship of Dr Rampersad Parasram, which gave birth to the UNC as a populist people’s party dedicated to the proposition that people would join the "crusade", as Basdeo Panday put it, not because of the colour of their skins but by "the content of their minds."
The UNC embraced everyone and eventually reached Whitehall in a coalition with none other that Robinson and his NAR, which had been reduced to a rump Tobago party. Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed!
And perhaps that political pragmatism explains the longevity of both Panday and the movement he heads.
The UNC remains the only party other than the PNM that has withstood the test of time in the country’s politics both in and out of government. Today the question is whether the COP can survive in a game where only two parties have dominated – the PNM and the UNC and its various predecessor organizations. And whether any third party can be useful in representing the views of those opposed to the governing party given the confines of the first-past-the-post electoral politics.
Political analysts, pollsters, and the man-in-the street welcomed the infant COP and wrote off the UNC and its allies. But the campaign and the result on November 5, 2007 General Election demonstrated that the UNC was alive and well, and that it was capable of co-opting other political elements.
Indeed that is the trademark of Panday. His earliest flirtation with politics in 1966 as a candidate of the Workers and Farmers Party (WFP) was a disaster. He belonged to the wrong "tribe", although he had all the other credentials.
When he re-emerged as the new messiah in the plains of Caroni following the death of Bhadase Maraj, the charismatic Hindu/Indian leader, he inherited a constituency that has remained loyal for more than 40 years.
Maraj and Dr Eric Williams set the political rules as far back as 1956 and polarized the country between the two founding races. It remained that way, despite the efforts of high profile members that crossed the racial divide on both sides.
Panday lost his deposit to the candidate of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), the successor party of Maraj’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the only party that survived from the lineup of 10 that faced the PNM in 1956.
The unwritten rules were clear: us and them, us being the governing PNM, the so-called black party, and the DLP, the Indian party. In 1976 when Panday re-entered electoral politics ready to do battle with Eric Williams he knew the idea of an Indian party winning government was as remote as a snowstorm in hell.
As the leader of the Indian base through his inheritance of the sugar workers union from Bhadase Maraj, he saw labour as the vehicle to get him to Whitehall – and it eventually did, 19 years later.
Unrest in the sugar and oil industries became the catalyst for the formation of a mass movement with the mantra "Let those who labour hold the reins." The experiment brought all the major labour groups together and race and ethnicity was to be buried with the DLP, which was the significant third party in the 1976 general election.
The DLP disappeared in the Panday phenomenon but the national unity he had hoped for was a mirage.It was not until 1986 with the NAR that it almost happened.
But NAR was an aberration. While the people were ready for change at all cost – and the PNM under George Chambers had given up the fight – the political philosophies were too far apart for it to happen.
When Panday and Robinson squared off, the atmosphere was almost identical to the bloodbath in the UNC that led to the creation of COP. But there was a fundamental element missing in the equation.
Trinidad and Tobago politics was always based on populism. Eric Williams, Bhadase Maraj and Basdeo Panday each possessed widespread appeal within their constituencies primarily because of their respective personalities. They also commanded their base in a way no other political leader has ever done.
Robinson pulled off the 1986 victory over the PNM not because he commanded the majority; he didn’t. But the nation was ready for change and each leader brought his constituency – Panday, Best, Hudson-Phillips and of course, Robinson. And there was no other party. It was a script that could not fail.
The miscalculation in the COP was that Winston Dookeran, with no onerous political baggage, an excellent track record as Governor of the Central and a former deputy prime minister, could appeal to the invisible voter and the disaffected UNC tribe.
The party built its communication message around that theme but Dookeran lacked the "rootsy" touch that had been ingrained in the nation’s political psyche. And the tribalism emerged to knock the COP off its pedestal.
There is a long list of political parties and their leaders in the nation’s electoral archives that point to the fact that it takes more than a symbol and a message to establish a true presence in the political landscape.
So where does it go from here?
Panday still insists – as he has done all through his political life – that a true national party in opposition is the only one that can make it to government. And he has said over and over again that the nation’s first past the post system is designed to keep one party in power.
It is that "politics of opposition" that the PNM has kept alive to its great benefit, as was demonstrated in the last election. Eric Williams even encouraged people to create political parties so there would be a splintered opposition vote. Ashford Sinanan and his West Indian National Party (WINP) was an example.
And the party established such strong roots during its initial 35 unbroken years in government that it remains in office even when it is not. Robinson and Panday both discovered that there was a PNM governing bureaucracy in place that frustrated their efforts at every turn. And whenever there was a third or any number of other parties it was very comfortable because it had the advantage of incumbency to maintain its hold on power.
The only real challenged to the government was from the Organization for National Reconstruction (ONR) in 1981. Karl Hudson-Phillips was fishing in the PNM pond but in spite of the strong support he got, the PNM remained unshaken and was returned to office with the strongest majority ever.
The ONR became the NAR and later died, though some will argue that it still lives. So too have all movements and parties.
What has survived is an advanced political model of the original Indian party. There are two political bases in Trinidad and Tobago. And it leaves no room for a splintered opposition. In 41 years, no opposition politician or party has challenged Panday and won. And there is a reason.
He built a people’s movement from the ground up. He worked with the people in the trenches. He marched to demand a better deal and was brutalized and jailed, the only national leader who has gone that distance. That is why the constituency he built refuses to desert him.
"You can’t just hand over this constituency to someone," Panday said during the 2007 election campaign. And the evidence is there as Ramesh L. Maharaj, and now Winston Dookeran, have discovered. Not even Panday’s fall from power took away his sheen.
But Panday is ready to retire. Even if his heart tells him no, his body is showing the fatigue after 42 years. And Dookeran is finding out that voters are fickle and unforgiving. So the implosion in the COP – though hushed after the initial public outbursts – is natural, based on the history of opposition politics.
Sustaining a vibrant political movement requires money, which the COP now lacks. And existing in the political wilderness for five years has been fatal for all opposition parties except the UNC and the PNM.
Yet new opposition parties emerge each election season, much to the pleasure of the governing establishment. Like the Shakespearean actor, they come on stage, "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." And then they die. Once "the revels are ended", they consume themselves and disappear.
And so it is today in the COP. Manning and the PNM will remain secure because they are the superior political machine. And until those who find the PNM brand of politics unpalatable agree to unite and dethrone them, the historical machinery cannot be dismantled to allow for a healthy multi-party democracy.
The best starting point for the opposition is what Jack Warner has engineered, an alliance of the opposition. If the COP takes a seat among the others in that alliance, there is hope that from among them a new leader will emerge who will create a new national party in the vision that Panday has had – a coalition of people, coming together for the national good, a tribe based not on gender or ethnicity but for the "content of their minds."
The people, I believe, are ready. But the nagging question that remains is whether those who lead are ready to take them in the right direction.
For now, the politics of opposition remains as it has always been. And Manning and the PNM like nothing better. And who can blame them?
Jai Parasram Toronto, Feb.05, 2008
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