The PDP precedent

DR ERROL N BENJAMIN

IN A LETTER of November 10 entitled “Tobago’s enlightened electorate,” I commended two African voices in Tobago for taking the enlightened stance of wanting “change,” citing Tobago’s neglect by the current regime as the reason for their choice, because people of African descent, by and large, are expected to vote People’s National Movement (PNM), as much as East Indians are expected to vote United National Congress (UNC).

Further, I contended that were it not for the largely African-based homogeneity in Tobago it was unlikely that they would have taken such a position, for ours, overall, is such a racially polarised society, politically, and they would have likely been influenced accordingly.

On December 6, however, those two voices rose to a crescendo among Tobagonians and the rest is now history:14-1 in favour of the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP).

Is it likely that the same may happen in TT for the next general election? The African homogeneity in Tobago, which negated the race factor in the politics and put issues first, leading to the demise of the PNM, is lacking in TT as a whole.

The historical antipathy between the two major groups, Africans and East Indians, arising from the perception that Indian indentureship was a ploy by the planter class to compromise the bargaining power of freed blacks, is well documented. The Westminster system of “first past the post” after independence only served to aggravate this distancing between the two groups, leading to the formation of the African-based PNM and the East Indian-based Democratic Labour Party/UNC (Ralph Premdas Ed: Identity, Ethnicity and Culture in the Caribbean).

The net effect of this has been the well known racial polarisation in the politics, spawning a “you scratch my back and I yours” syndrome in which issues are of little significance, as has been the case in Tobago – only the “mess of pottage” to be had at all levels of the society as the reward for your unquestioning loyalty and leaders ever ready to exploit such loyalty for it provided the power without ever having to account.

Tobago at present is the perfect foil to this debasement in our national politics and the lesson to be learnt from December 6 is that you cannot take people for granted and in the final analysis you will be called to account. But our tribal politics and the rewards it can bring are so enmeshed in our psyche as a people at all levels that it is difficult to see the Tobago precedent being followed in Trinidad.

However, if even the ingredients for racial division are ever-present in the society, an attempt can be made to eliminate the perception of racial antipathy by providing the leadership that can eliminate such a perception.

The 1986 model is a good one to follow with the composite African leadership in ANR Robinson and Basdeo Panday. But considering the fallout that followed, due in part, no doubt, to the racial bogey which reasserted itself, those in leadership must be impeccable in terms of character, impervious to the temptation of serving the self, which a divided politics fosters, and totally acceptable to the populace as a whole.

Which is why the UNC in its present configuration, race-based as it is much like the PNM, and with its leadership tainted, also much like that of the PNM because both are beneficiaries of the current politics of division, cannot be the solution, unless there is a radical change to a leadership that has a wide cross ethno/cultural appeal.

And why not a totally new political entity of the kind that the PDP represents in Tobago. However, the lessons of the ONR (Organisation for National Reconstruction) going it alone are instructive, which speaks to the need for a political entity that is all-embracing and with a leadership equally so, perhaps of the kind of 1986, renewed and wiser after the mistakes of the past.