Ghost of politics past

THE APRIL 28 general election is about the future. Yet, the ghost of politics past seems to be a dominant presence on the campaign trail.

John Jeremie’s appearance on a UNC platform on April 14 may have the outward trappings of a surprise, but it has a very recent precedent.

Just as the former PNM attorney general has dramatically reversed course to embrace Kamla Persad-Bissessar, so too has Jack Warner, the embattled ex-FIFA vice president who resigned from her cabinet and as the UNC’s Chaguanas West MP in 2013.

Ms Persad-Bissessar herself is something of a figure from history, having already served as this country’s sixth prime minister. Her assemblage of a “coalition of interests” is an echo of the People’s Partnership coalition she formed to unseat Patrick Manning – with some principals of that endeavour, such as the COP’s Prakash Ramadhar, again featuring.

If the UNC seems to be, like Lot’s wife, wilfully looking back despite the need to look forward, the PNM’s Stuart Young is trapped in a Janus-like configuration in which he must look both ways.

To some extent, all elections are about the past, in that they are about the record of the incumbent administration. But Mr Young cannot escape the inconvenient fact that he served under Keith Rowley for ten years. Nor has Dr Rowley disappeared entirely – he remains active on the party platform as the political leader of the PNM.

Even a relatively new figure like Mickela Panday is haunted by spectres.

Ms Panday has opted to lean into the legacy of her father, the late Basdeo Panday, in choosing to contest the Couva North seat once held by him. Ms Persad-Bissessar’s sudden embrace of Mr Jeremie – a key antagonist of Mr Panday – may well be aimed at Ms Panday. The UNC and Patriotic Front, thus, seem more focused on litigating the legacy of the country’s fifth PM, not policy.

“What’s past is prologue,” Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest. There is the risk that all these politicians, in resurrecting shadows, create the impression of being aligned not with the new, but with the old.

A sense of history, experience, consistency, stability – these are good things for any leader to embrace. But in a completely new global paradigm, thanks to Donald Trump and things like the climate crisis, completely new approaches are required.

There is a difference between fraternising with past figures and being stale; between orthodoxy and being old-fashioned; between nostalgia for the good old days and burying one’s head in the sand. Ignoring the clouds hanging over personalities seems recklessly obstinate in these perilous times. For it is the present and the future, not the past, that politicians should serve. Voters deserve better.