What is it about us that we have this inability to properly govern ourselves?
Why is it that despite our promises and protestations to the contrary, the minute we “become in charge”, we revert to what we have always known about our people in authority and in governance?
The early writings of Naipaul drew heavily on this authoritarian persona; the moment a local was given a “position”, especially a “position with a uniform”, that person became a caricature of a pompous, arrogant, minor British official.
From doorman to postmaster, the “authority” conferred by shining buttons and maybe epaulets, made the person, while at work, a character totally different from whom he was in the neighbourhood.
Actually, it is my opinion that this affliction also affected Naipaul himself, creating his studied disdain for us when he too, “became British”. Being qualified neither in psychology nor sociology, I have no learned basis to argue in support of this opinion, but it is my opinion.
I opened this column not to attack the government, but merely acknowledge this fatal flaw of ours—our clear and proven inability to govern ourselves properly-- for two reasons.
Firstly, hoping to help us understand who we are politically, and secondly, in the hope that what I am bold enough to say might make a little difference where it counts and help us to, literally, find ourselves politically.
Ambitious undertaking? Maybe I too am being afflicted by this hubris of which I write? But let me admit it before you do!
As I note the almost rabid attacks upon the government, most if not all, originating from the persons who had so thoroughly shamed us, and indeed themselves when they were in office, I wonder by what standard of governance in our history they are judging Kamla and her team?
I was eighteen when Eric Williams was swept into power in 1956. I felt a sense of hope, a sense of a maturing society. I was twenty four when we were handed our “Independence”, and “massa day (was) done”. I was proud of being born here and I stayed, in every sense of the word. My sojourn in Houston from 1964 through 1967 only strengthened my pride in my little country.
But by 1970 the promise had been broken. People who differed from Williams were a “recalcitrant minority”, those who challenged his opinion “could get the hell out of here”, and when he spoke “not a damn dog (must) bark”.
Williams survived the Black Power uprising, but arrogance never waned. The country was rescued by the Yom Kippur War and the astronomic rise in oil prices.
Our corruption capabilities soared as well. Williams had died in 1981, but the squandermania continued, causing the Chambers’ (“All ah we tief”) PNM to choose to demit office and hand the broken country to the NAR in 1986.
The legacy of the PNM, after thirty years, and an oil boom was zero!
The incoming NAR was an amalgam of three man-rats. The “least” of the presumed evils was made Political Leader, but he too succumbed to the hubris of office and the attacks of the defeated PNM who managed to shift the blame for the state of the country on to the NAR.
The subsequent governments of Manning, Panday and then Manning were riddled with corruption, nepotism, incompetence and arrogance. And the absolute worst of these was the reign of Manning 2.
When Manning deliberately demitted office last May, we created the myth that the Peoples’ Partnership was a “new government”. But there was nobody new there. And the promises made in the campaign were not “new”.
Transparency, honesty, integrity, accountability and trinkets had been offered to us all before, over and over again, by government following government.
So having seen the most corrupt and nepotistic government in our history drummed out, we assumed that the new people were better than they really were, better than they could have been.
But, as outlined above, this “we turn now” is part of our culture, not just of our politics, so we cannot rage when we see it being practiced by any new government.
However, the bottom line is that the errors and omissions of the present government (and there have been many!) pale in comparison to with the nepotism, arrogance, incompetence and corruption of Manning, Imbert, Rowley and the PNM, who now sanctimoniously cry down patently lesser evils.
The real danger we face in our country today is that we are being harangued, largely by the discredited PNM, to tear down the government of the day, when we have absolutely nothing and no one with which to replace it. Be careful for what you wish, T&T. The last time we did this, the result was July 1990.
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