The people have not all spoken

A low 57 per cent turnout of voters in the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) elections last week gave a landslide victory to the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP) and rewrote history. The PNM, who ran the place for the last 21 continuous years, were ousted well and truly, retaining only one solitary seat of the 15 that were up for grabs. It is what might be described as a blowout.

The interesting statistic is that nearly half the people eligible to vote – 47 per cent – did not bother to go to the polling station for one reason or another. And so they will have to live with the consequences, either negative or positive, of their inaction.

With only roughly 5,000 votes between the PDP and PNM, there could easily have been another outcome. It is true that every vote matters and the proof of that is the loss of the former chief secretary of his seat by only two votes, and the recount did not change the result.

A change of government at intervals is healthy, but the move from the well-entrenched PNM was so complete and swift that it makes one wonder if the word “patriotic” in the name of the new ruling party in Tobago is something to worry about, considering the wave of populist forms of nationalism sweeping across the globe. I wonder if "patriotic" refers to a sense of deep loyalty to the country of TT or to just the island of Tobago? The near clean electoral sweep seemed to be a rejection not just of the PNM but of a party headquartered in Trinidad, although the campaigners never bad-talked Trinis.

“Patriotic” is one of those edgy words that can conjure negative or positive meanings, and given the public persona of the founder of the PDP, the one and only Watson Duke, whose interest in overturning acceptable norms is on record, we might well ask the question: to whom and what does he feel patriotic?

Just hours after the PDP embarrassed the PNM into near-political oblivion, Duke was insisting on continuing as president of the Public Services Association (PSA), and also serving in the THA as a secretary. Farley Augustine, deputy political leader of the party and incoming Chief Secretary, immediately stepped up to say that Mr Duke could not do both and get paid. There may well be much more of that to come. Augustine is popular and considered proper, Duke is vain and unpredictable, even reckless.

The next few weeks and months will be fascinating, not just for the backroom politics but as the new THA grapples with the very serious crisis of containing the rapid spread of covid in Tobago, which is now registering among the highest death rates per capita in the region.

It is not the sort of crisis President Joe Biden was referring to last Thursday when he told the gathering of 100 governments at the Summit of Democracy that democracy is facing a moment of reckoning. He might have been encouraged if he had seen democracy in action in Tobago, even if it was not a high turnout at the polls and a time of deep covid.

The point is that the will of the people prevailed and there was a peaceful handover of the reins of power from a political group with a stranglehold on almost every part of the moribund economy to a group of aspirants who may not be able to manage a critical time such as the present, but who convinced the majority of the people that they deserved a chance to prove otherwise.

President Biden was talking about the fact that if by democracy we mean the right to self-determination and personal freedoms, then the pandemic has emboldened autocratic regimes, adding great tensions in societies everywhere.

In contrast, the often violent demonstrations worldwide, except in undemocratic countries such as China, against anti-covid mask-wearing, for example, may not be convenient or even wise, but they were evidence of democracy in action. But democracy is more than the right to self-expression, it is also about how society works.

We should consider the many imperfections in the democratic processes. By all accounts, the PNM attempted to influence voters in Tobago with a variety of handouts, as the parties here and regionally apparently do routinely at election time. That is a form of corruption as much as it is undemocratic for a government in power to postpone elections or threaten opponents in the House or out of it.

For all of that, perhaps the worst global skewing of democracy is the current plague of disinformation that has undermined institutions, such as Trump did to the electoral process in the US, causing social polarisation and leading to inequality among citizens and to the unfair treatment of many.

We need to open our eyes wide, and it is worth remembering what President Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It has to be fought for and defended by each generation.”