Dear Ms Persad-Bissessar,I ask you to forgive what may appear to be a piece of impertinence on my part in writing this open letter to you since I do not know you and, to the best of my knowledge we have never met. I assure you it is not my habit to write letters to women, especially married women I do not know.
So what am I doing writing this open letter to you? My reasons are simple.
In the first place I trust that you understand that your incredible victory in the UNC internal election has placed you at the centre of the unfolding political drama in our country.
As such, the choices you make and the decisions you take over the course of the next few weeks and months will determine whether our country shall make a relatively peaceful transition to a new social and political order or whether we shall have to drink the bitter draught of chaos before we can rise again.
I also write to you from the unshakeable belief that to be a citizen of an independent country is to accept responsibility for what happens in that country.
And the acceptance of such responsibility demands, from each and every one of us, with such abilities as may be within our power and with such resources as we may possess, that we be prepared to do whatever we can to save our nation.
This is part of my attempt to fulfill that obligation.
I assure you that I have no hidden agenda. I belong to no political party (although for most of my life I have described myself as a Tapiaman and I still do so today), and I seek neither preferment, placement nor reward.
Indeed let me say that there is nothing that I want from you or that you can give to me except for a measure of serious consideration, on your part, to these words.
First of all, Dear Lady, I would wish you to comprehend with every fibre of your being the exceedingly perilous position in which our country finds itself today.
I stress that, because I suspect, like most politicians caught up in the frenzied whirl of day-to-day activities, that you hardly have time to contemplate the forest from the trees. But you must understand that our nation is in grave danger.
If I cannot convince you of that then you need read no further.
The danger to our nation arises because the old regime of government and politics, of maximum leadership, of racial polarisation, of corruption and bobol, of squandermania and malfeasance, of insufferable arrogance and dictatorship, is collapsing before our eyes.
Nothing can halt that collapse. But that old regime, as perfidious as it is, constitutes the order that we know.
Should it collapse before a new political order can be pulled together, the consequences will be either anarchy and chaos or a resurgence of authoritarianism so draconian as to obliterate any possibility of democracy and freedom for our people for decades to come.
If you understand this, if you truly believe this, then you must be absolutely clear as to what your critical role in this drama must be.
Your role is not to replace Mr Panday. To do so would be to reincarnate the maximum leadership of which Mr Panday was the prime exemplar. Equally, your role is not to be Leader of the Opposition.
What the citizens are looking for is not a leader of the opposition but a leader of our nation.Nor is it your role to defeat Mr Manning.
Indeed you should understand that Mr Manning’s fate is sealed. The people have already taken his measure and stand ready to box him, church him and bury him. They await only a credible vision of the thereafter.
Finally it is not your role to rush to put together any accommodation of parties or persons. It may be that in the fullness of time the need for such an accommodation shall become indispensable to the transition.
But for now it is not a priority and it is not your role.
Your role, Dear Lady, the challenge which history has placed before you, is to deliver our nation from bondage.
The only way that you can do this is to become the voice of a new vision of redemption. There is nothing else on your agenda as important as elaborating for the people, all our people, a vision of what our country could be, if re-founded on the principles of integrity, equality, security and popular sovereignty.
For you there is nothing else more important but the elaboration of such a new vision and traversing our land in the east, in the west, in the north and in the south, giving voice to that vision.
Please believe me, Dear Lady, when I say that I understand how immensely difficult it will be for you to even contemplate such an undertaking.
In the first place, scant weeks after your victory you are already being assailed from all sides by opportunists and con-men who, with honeyed tongues, would bend you to their own interests and cover you in shame and disgrace.
The moment you seek to undertake this journey, many of those who today say they support you will swiftly turn against you and try to bring you down.
Know however that they are but dross and that from the moment you undertake this journey you shall never walk alone.
Moreover, and we must be brutally honest about it, Dear Lady, as a significant player in the ranks of the old regime for so many years, it may be difficult for you to unshackle yourself from the assumptions of the past and to allow yourself to dream the dream of a new world.
But history and fate have chosen you and it is not for me or anyone else to question why. What I do know is that inherent in the challenge you face is the test of your leadership.
It is said that cometh the hour cometh the man. I assure you that our people are ready to climb out of the putrid and fetid sea of corruption and shame in which we have been forced to swim for decades under the old regime.
They are ready to climb El Tucuche and seize their selfhood and their sovereignty.
The only question is whether you are woman enough to lead them there.
Respectfully,
Michael Harris
(Reproduced from the Trinidad Express)
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