The Best Always Wins

December 3, 2000
By Selwyn R. Cudjoe

LLOYD Best and David Abdulah have called for a new political dispensation. According to Abdulah, “it is becoming more imperative with each passing day for a new political formation... This must be the last election where the citizenry is effectively left without no real choice.” (Newsday, Nov 26). Each sees the shortcomings of the PNM and the UNC and believes he has the formula for organising a new political order.

Almost obsessively, Best condemns Eric Williams for not listening to C L R James in 1961. If only Williams had listened, all would be well with our society today. To hear Best tell it, 1961 represented an epistemological break (à la Althusser) for the PNM; a missed opportunity that doomed PNM to irrelevance.

Reading Best, one is reminded of the truism that, in retrospect, academics always have the correct answers. There is always the breathtaking suggestion that if only he were there, all would be well; that somehow, in hindsight, he sees clearer than those who were in midst of the action.

It is only well to remember that James's political formations (with the possible exception of the Workers and Farmer's Party) never consisted of more than 50 persons and he never led a government. His only attempt at election led to his stunning defeat.

Abdulah's presentation is not as detailed or as complex as Best's. He would like to see a political formulation that offers “a real vision for Trinidad and Tobago built on the values of equity, social justice and peace”.

I suspect his formulation involves a new relationship between the government and workers or a government of, by and for the working people. Since the composition of the traditional working class has changed over the years, one has to clarify such a concept in the contemporary era.

In the present configuration, the role of labour and the experience of work have changed in many ways. It is necessary always to affirm the dignity of work and to insist on a just reward for its contribution to building society.

However, changing technologies, the shift from blue-collar to white collar work, and the competitive pressures of globalisation have swept away the old myth of a unitary—and not coincidentally, male dominated—working class. The work force has been transformed by the active participation of women, by generational shifts, and new technologies. Not that labour should prostrate itself before this new international economic order (some see it as a new form of colonialism) but it must offer a new way of thinking that encompasses the whole society.

As it makes its demands, labour must think of its corroborating responsibilities (or what the PNM calls, “rights and responsibilities”) in the age of globalisation.

Under the circumstances, neither Best nor Abdulah has been fair to the PNM. The party has offered a Vision Statement about how it intends to operate in the next decade. It has spoken about its approach to civil society, its relationship with labour unions, and its approach to gender issues and governance.

The party breaks new ground in its concept of decentralisation of state power and its determination to locate more power in the community.

The document suggests that whereas colonialism, even neo-colonialism, meant the mere replication of colonial relations, the contemporary era demands a new relationship between the individual and the community and a redefinition of rights and obligations. Ecological concerns, made more urgent by the impact of the devastating floods that took place last week and constitutional reform, highlighted by the Gypsy/Chaitan cases and the senatorial conflict with the President, are central to the PNM's conception of the future. Those who wish to dismiss the PNM must examine these ideas.

I am the first person to admit that the cloying nexus of race and politics detracted from Tapia and Motion's ideas. But then we live in a society in which race and politics are intertwined closely.

Yet, within the limits offered by the society—such as its ethnic concerns and different religious conceptions—PNM's record in terms of racial inclusion, distribution of resources and social equity far surpass that of the UNC or any other party. When the electorate turns to the PNM, they do so not because they are unaware of what Tapia and Motion have to offer.

They do so because the PNM has kept the society on an even keel and offers a relatively secure horizon of possibilities. To ignore PNM's Vision Statement or to argue that the people have no choice are fallacious positions.

Trinbagonians have been discerning in their choices. They may have been too incremental in their political moves or much too deliberative in their ways of seeing things. Yet, they dismissed the PNM when it became impervious to their wishes, retired NAR when it became too imperial and gave the UNC a fighting chance (17 seats) when the PNM forgot to deal with their everyday concerns.

Such discrimination suggests that people choose in their own way and in their own time. They will do so again on December 11.

Although altruism involves the highest form of self-interest (take the examples of Jesus or Gandhi), one cannot reduce theories of social justice and equity to the self-referential: that is, to measure what is good for society by thinking of how it redounds to one's self interest. Neither Best nor Abdulah are dis-interested parties in the destiny of a new political formation. Can they, with a straight face, say that those who vote for the PNM or the UNC are misguided; that they alone have the correct formulations?

No party lives forever. A victorious PNM must be more responsive to the diverse currents into our society. Although Motion and Tapia may ascend and be relevant in the first decade of the 21st century, it is necessary always to distinguish between the altruistic and the self-referential.

People are capable of making intelligent decisions about their future. This is a necessary premise from which to begin any serious discussion about the political future of our country.

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