The UNC battle for power

THE EDITOR: UNC elections are in the air and one wonders how free and fair they will be. Will there be the usual subterfuge since these elections, like all others in this politically, racially divided country, will inevitably evolve out of the usual tribal framework of “you scratch my back and I yours,” with leaders massaging the tribe to hold on to power and the tribe responding with unquestioning support for the “mess of pottage” that will be their reward. In this scenario, the issue of service to the people or the national good is never a priority.

As to the leader, I have given her credit in my letters for taking the party to the brink of government in the last election, but like with Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the US, the election machinery in this country is too subtle, too controlling for her to win, so in the end she lost.

And this has been one of her many losses which, out of the character of good leadership, should make it morally obligatory for her to step down and give someone else an opportunity to lead. But conscience, that sense of right, of “how it go look,” of what the people will say, what history will say, “how will I be remembered, what will my legacy be,” never seems to cross her mind, as is to be expected in our style of politics.

The latter has a “morality of its own,” according to an old guru of the party, which, it seems, is to serve one’s self, to hold on to power at all cost.

And she has manoeuvred the situation well to that effect. All would-be opposition like the old stagers have been booted out. Never mind their experience, their cognitive capabilities, or the role they can play to hold the Government in check.

Ironically, these qualities, instead of fostering their position in the party, would have been the reason for their exclusion, for such experience, such intellectual capacity, would mean questions for a perceived failing leadership and this just won’t do, if power is to be retained for another five years.

In their place some young ’uns would have been chosen, eager for a “wuk” and the prestige of office but, most significantly, ever willing to provide an undying, unquestioning support for the leadership in exchange for this “mess of pottage.” It is the same “you scratch my back and I yours” syndrome at play in the politics, incidentally for both sides, but in this situation at a more elevated level.

It is instructive how a once senior member, previously opposed to the present leadership, is now in alignment, possibly recognising the political wisdom of joining for the perks as against contesting for a worthy cause of new leadership and losing out in the end.

And what of the people on the ground? The racial divide fostered in the national elections and which has given her unquestioning pride of place as leader of the tribe as against the enemy from the other side, now spills over into the party elections. And as much as she was seen as Mai then, she continues to be regarded as such in the local, with all the old women and old men in the temples, in the villages, in the fields, swooning at her feet, and even all the not so old men and women looking for a senatorship, a contract or some kind of “wuk,” equally obedient.

No question of a leader with proven competence, of the future, of one entering into an alliance with a second party to achieve a 1986 possibility. All such is nought for everything is about conferring power without question and the “mess of pottage” to be had in return.

As I close I want to emphasise that there is nothing personal about this letter. In fact both the leadership and her obedient supporters are victims of a system that has driven them to this. The attempt here, futile as it seems, is to inspire some introspection into leadership without conscience, all for power, and for the people, if that is possible, to become aware of their willing participation in their own subordination in the hope of some payback, at the expense of their own dignity and self-respect.

DR ERROL N BENJAMIN

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