Testing Political Times - the Peter O'Connor column

I had, since the beginning of this year, taken upon myself the task of trying to explain why we have such poor leadership in our country. 

I have tried to explain that the “pool” from which we source our leaders is the same stagnant pool in which we all swim and live. If, among us, at all the levels which we live, there is no decency, honesty, integrity or good social custom, then we cannot expect that the leaders we elect from that pool to acquire these traits.

My ongoing argument is that we must become the difference we want to see in our leaders. 

When (if?) we can create a different society at the levels where we live, work and operate, these qualities will drift upwards into our leaders’ consciousness. However, notwithstanding this attempt at a movement towards what I shall call “decency”, there are issues to be faced.

One of these of course is our natural environment, those portions of rainforest, (“bush with snakes”), wetlands (“swamp with snakes and mosquitoes”), pristine rivers (“places to lime and litter”), and remote beaches (places to throw fetes”). 

Recently our government responded to concerns from environmentalists about expanded quarrying in the Arima Valley. 

I consider our natural environment to be the foundation of our existence and therefore for our ability to be reasonably civilized. It is from our mountains and forests that our streams and rivers spring, providing us with water. It is our trees which absorb poisons in the air and discharge pure oxygen for us to breathe. Our forests provide the insects which pollinate the plants and flowers which feed us and give us joy. And the forests help to cool our days and our temperaments.

One of the first things we as a people need to understand is this very real value of our natural environment, so that we can guide our leaders in how to care for it. So that is why I see government’s intervention in the quarrying matter as one small step, but a very significant step, in a new, but welcome direction.

But more important to me than the government taking the right step, was the outcry from the people. 

When the government announced that the expanded quarrying would be stopped, and the bulldozed hillside would be replanted by the Forestry Division, there was no objection from any quarter. Not even Keith Rowley or the PNM objected to this government decision.

But desecration of the environment has not stopped everywhere. From littering to bulldozing, people are still destroying our precious places, and we must continue, not just to protect these places, but to develop the awareness as to how important these places really are. 

It is not enough for us to wonder why foreigners appreciate our “bush” and “swamps”. We must understand them, and then we will learn to appreciate them too (it’s called “becoming first world”, and it comes, in the order of things, before having tall shiny buildings!).

But even as we seek to learn about the nature which surrounds us, we must wonder at other behavioural traits of our leadership. I am referring to the long-impending fallout among constituents of the Peoples’ Partnership. 

This essentially rose out of the “defection” of COP’s Mayor of San Fernando, Marlene Coudray, suddenly contesting, and then winning, the position of Deputy Political Leader of the UNC. COP has been howling “betrayal”, and the UNC has been “justifying” the defection by saying that COP, upon formation six years ago, had done the same thing to the UNC.

Where should we stand on this? 

We the people who want - without our own sacrifices or inputs - integrity, decency and transparency from our politicians? 

So, how might you feel if you came to work one day and discovered that one of your department managers had suddenly been transferred and promoted to another department, but you were never consulted? Surely, you would feel betrayed? 

And everyone one of us knows this whole issue was badly handled, by Coudray and the UNC to begin with, and by the immaturity of the COP from then on. The UNC’s pretense that this was all normal is simply ridiculous, because they would have reacted just as COP did if the switch had been from UNC to COP. And we all know that, as does everyone in the UNC.

Actually the only judgment I can put on this was coined, ironically by Basdeo Panday: “Politics has a morality of its own”.

But, of course, COP overreacted, and went public with threats of withdrawing from the Partnership, behaving just as irresponsible as we all do, and to the time of writing this, the issues opened have not been healed.

Is there anything we, the people, can to here to guide them, as we did with the quarrying?