Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada. He united the fractured and disorganized right and removed the 'invincible' Liberals from office after a decade in power.
He presides over a minority government in Canada, which means that he controls the support of the most members of the lower house of the Parliament but not a majority of them. If that sounds confusing it means that the three other opposition parties together have a majority and can topple the Harper government at any time on a confidence motion or by voting down a money bill.
But a few years ago nobody thought of him as a leader much less the leader of the country.
He was the leader of a failing party called the Canadian Alliance boasting of new politics. Yes new politics.
Before that he was heading a right-wing pressure group called the Citizens' Coalition that he helped form after a fallout with the leader of another right-wing party, the Reform Party of Canada, which he also helped form.
All that was happening while the Liberal Party was sitting comfortable with three successive majority governments.
So what happened?
Well some people, who understood the nature of politics, could see the big picture and wanted to put personalities aside, decided to get together and do something about the splintered and fractured opposition.
There were two right-wing parties in the country – one, the remnant of the mighty Progressive Party that was reduced to two of the 308 seats in the House of Commons in 1993 after two back-to-back majorities, the other a right-wing party led by Harper.
The question the strategists asked was this: Why are we fighting each other when we share the same basic values and why are we dividing our votes to let the Liberals run away with victory election after election?
The leaders weren't keen on the obvious answer. Unity didn't appeal to them, each wanted to stand his ground and it looked like it would be business as usual when the populist Prime Minister Jean Chretien passed the torch to his finance Paul Martin who was a kind of financial magician who had taken a massive debt and turned around a surplus in a few short years.
Martin looked invincible but the backroom right-wing strategists went to Harper and the leader of the Progressive Conservatives with a simple message: Stand your ground and we stay in opposition forever.
They insisted that enough was enough and said there must be one party. And they were not going to take no for an answer.
That one party was born out of hard negotiating and a fight for the leadership, which Harper won. It was not the prettiest thing, but it was done and the new Conservative Party of Canada was born.
A big scandal involving misappropriating millions of dollars in taxpayers' money broke just as Martin was settling down in his new job as Prime Minister, but he fought back and called an election.
The new right-wing boys were ready. The party was new, it's leadership untrained in the way of the new business at hand. But a skillful strategy and political communication team gave the Liberal party a run for its money, reducing it to a minority.
One year later it was out of office. And Harper was Prime Minister, the same Harper who was written off a few years before.
Harper would have remained a political anecdote had it not been for the foresight of a few men and women who decided that Canada had to free itself from the stranglehold of a party that had somehow come to believe it had an almost divine right to govern.
They understood that no matter how noble the politics of each party was they couldn't shake the governing party, in spite of corruption and other misdeeds, without opposition unity. Yes, opposition unity, that elusive thing that almost seems like an obscenity in today's politics in Trinidad and Tobago.
They stopped the nonsense, got together as a single party with a single agenda and THEY WON!
Yes they defeated the invincible Liberals.
Today Trinidad and Tobago politicians would do well to learn from the lessons of Canada.
Both the UNC Alliance and the Congress of the People have people with talent and who have the national interest at heart.
Both parties want to make Trinidad and Tobago a better place.
On the other hand the invincible People's National Movement with a questionable track record and a perception of corruption worse than any previous government, is now vulnerable.
If the opposition is serious about removing the governing party then it would be wise to look to Canada and see the light of unity, get together as one party and fight the PNM one-on-one.
Time is short and the stakes are high, but political miracles can happen. But first you have to believe.
It's time for opposition politicians to truly ask what is more important – their personal agendas or the national interest.
Now is not the time to fail Trinidad and Tobago. The people are waiting and depending on you. And they won't forgive you for failing them.
Jai Parasram - Toronto 27 Sept. 07
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