Time to shun party politics

THE EDITOR: Even when the PNM is out of power, as in the existential case in Tobago, it still controls the narrative by decrying everything that happens under the party that beat it. It is time for the people of this nation to face the reality that is staring us in the face but which we are too busy fighting each other to admit to. We cannot keep making the same mistakes repeatedly and hope for different results.

After 60 years of hating others who look different from what we see in the mirror, we must admit that hatred of our neighbours only impoverishes us. The real enemy is the so-called intelligentsia, the builders of this reality, the Constitution writers – the lawyers who use fancy words to befuddle us and make the written word so confusing that it takes constitutional experts to unravel the "true" meaning of the text.

Now, one may ask, why would authorities be so cruel to ordinary people who cannot even understand the words of our Constitution? Imagine a document written in a time of great upheaval in the world with nations of the Commonwealth petitioning the UK for freedom from foreign masters and foisted on people eager for freedom.

Moreover, even though Britain did not have a written document, these colonial overlords drafted a constitution for the people of their Commonwealth countries before they allowed them to be free from their alien oppressors.

So, we went from British rule with the queen thousands of miles away to an even worse predicament – a ruler, chosen by a primarily uneducated, illiterate, impoverished people, with one person to rule over us – the prime minister.

Therefore, like lambs to the slaughter, we readily accepted the concept of becoming an independent nation with all the riches that once went to the British people remaining under our control. What happened over the ensuing six decades has been a never-ending nightmare.

Under the British crown, some laws went back centuries, controlling the uneducated poor. The people were brutally ruled with an iron fist, and the mighty lords of the judiciary always had the last word. But applying the Westminster system to racial partisanship in Trinidad was different when we did not have the profundity to be genuinely independent in thought.

Yes, we had local British-trained scholars to indoctrinate us into the "civilised" world. However, as we've seen for decades, the Westminster system only breeds contempt for the poor and elevates the rich for canonisation. We build statues to them, name buildings, parks and roads after them, and we bow down and worship them as our saviours and heroes, even as they kept their steel boots firmly planted on our throats.

Our first PM was an outstanding scholar. However, brilliant scholars do not make good national leaders. The good doctor should have stuck to what his British education prepared him for – to be an exceptional teacher in the classroom.

If Eric Williams were alive today, undoubtedly, he would readily admit that his concept of one party to rule them all was a failure. It began with the failure of the West Indies Federation (other islands did not want to give up a benevolent British queen for a Trinidadian megalomaniac) and then came the Black Power movement that caused him immeasurable pain and suffering.

But, as the scripture states, there is a season for everything: "A time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace."

Our (the poor, undereducated masses) time is at hand. But do we have the profound stamina and the wherewithal to arise and demand our birthright, or will we continue to accept that we are unworthy of moral justice?

Will another threescore years find us fighting the same fight that we have fought over and over but continue to lose to the rich and powerful, or will we take up the mantle of true justice, not just for us, but for the sake of our children and their heirs?

This will only happen when we dismiss our overlords (the PNM and the UNC) and take back our country. To do that, we must eschew party politics and, instead, choose independent, compassionate leaders from within our communities since, after 60 years, parties have proven worthless to the cause of good governance in TT.

REX CHOOKOLINGO

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