Ethnic Gridlock
When an elector votes, she usually wants and expects the party she is voting for to win, so those who voted on December 10 can be said to have wanted and expected the party of their choice to win. But since the result of the election was a tie, neither UNC nor PNM has won, or lost for that matter. The electorate contrived to produce a situation in which they elected neither winner nor loser though they voted for a winner. And when we look for the explanation, the best answer we can find is that they voted, primarily and fundamentally on the basis of ethnicity. Or, to put it more bluntly, they were motivated by ethnic distrust: Indians not trusting Africans with the reins of power, and Africans not wanting Indians to rule over them either.
In a context like Trinidad where, critically, half of the demography is African and half Indian (with apologies to the other ethnicities for this literally inaccurate classification), the explanation for the stalemate has little to do with performance, corruption, vision, or inclusion. These things matter essentially either as issues that politicians can readily highlight before the public mind without outraging their civilised tolerance of deception too much or as subterfuges for the real issue of ethnic control.
They are weapons used either to protect or attack an ethnic monolith. It is the narrow interests of ethnicity that they serve. And, in the recent election, one clear proof is the utter disregard by Indian voters of the chain of scandals of corruption that have surrounded the UNC government.
The 18-18 tie of December 10 is the clearest piece of evidence we have had so far in self-governed Trinidad and Tobago that the politics is essentially ethnicised. The evidence has been there all along in different degrees: in two ethnically polar parties, one led by an African, the other by an Indian; in the first inclusive party, the PNM, having an African or a non-Indian as political leader and an Indian as deputy for all of its life; in low levels of enthusiasm on the part of Indians, at one time, for active involvement in either the national politics or the social mainstream; in the Indian-led party joining up opportunistically with other small or not well established parties to defeat the PNM; in the ONR led by an African with an Indian as his deputy; in the African-led PNM's long bask in power as against the long sojourn of the Indian-led party (under various names) in the opposition; in the failed NAR experimentation with national unity; in election results since 1991 showing a close finish between the PNM and the UNC; in the Tobago seats constantly making a difference nationally.
The ethnic distrust no doubt is a natural reflex of human group differences, but it is nourished by a Westminster first-past-past-the-post system that gives the fruits of government to whichever party manages to win a majority of seats. The critical effect of this is that those who vote for the eventual winner become psychically and materially connected to state power and control and the fruits of that state of affairs, while those who vote for the eventual loser feel psychically and materially cut off from the positive conditions of power. Since the parties are essentially either African- or Indian-dominated, what this means is that one ethnicity is control while the other is (or feels) subjugated.
We must come to the conclusion, therefore, that the first-past-the-post model of governance is unsuited to Trinidadian society, given the latter's ethnic polarisation at the political (if not other kinds of) level.
We have had the understanding for some time now, but we have not acted on it to bring about a much-needed constitutional change because we have been habituated into believing that the British heritage must be superior (despite the evidence) and because we have deceived ourselves with a number of fantasies. One of them is that one ethnic party could be satisfactorily inclusive in the presence of another ethnic party. And another is that an absence of robust community politics in the context of a constitution that maximises prime ministerial power will eventually distribute goods, services, and conditions for personal and family prosperity equitably and even-handedly.
In not producing either winner or loser (in terms of a majority of seats), the December 10 election has provided a golden opportunity for us to change the unsuitable state of affairs to accommodate the ethnic composition of Trinidadian society. But we have to be careful not to produce something that will (continue to) victimise minority ethnicities.
One of those minority ethnicities, perhaps the most important, is Tobago, which the first-past-the-post system has victimised from the very outset. Tobago has waited on Trinidad for too long for too much: for 'national policy', for a budget, for goods and services, for expertise, for even a House of Assembly and its rules and procedures.
When we mobilise the stakeholder constituencies to break the ethnic gridlock, it is not only the Indo- and Afro-Trinidadian ethnicities that must be catered to, but the Tobagonian as well.
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