Government Takeover
Sooner rather than later, we'll be going to the polls, but until we do, government will be in charge. There is no other institution or structure to either dislodge or significantly thwart it. In the present electoral term, government has been in charge since the 18-18 tie and if, come Wednesday, a speaker is elected, it will remain in charge until, as happened in the case of the former UNC government, its majority in parliament, this one hopefully speaker-enabled, reduces to a minority in whatever way. It's all about achieving and maintaining a parliamentary majority. At least, that's how the politics of this country enacts itself.
So Manning could say, as recently as a few days ago, that if a speaker (who, of course, he expects to support his government) does not get elected, he will take the country back to the polls before the year ends. And both Panday and Maharaj could, each though relying on different strategies, call for elections to be held no later than October and without a second sitting of parliament.
In government with a non-majority of 18 seats, Manning looks for the crutch of a speaker to stay there, and, apart from relying on legal technicalities to extend his occupation as long as possible, he is mysteriously hopeful that a speaker will pop into reality. Out of government, but also with a non-majority of 18 seats, Panday wants elections now to get back there, hopefully on the basis of a majority, and his major strategy to minimise the wait as much as possible is civil disobedience, which has so far not worked. Also out of government, Maharaj probably wants to get back there (how, given his almost non-existent constituency, is not immediately clear!), but his strategy is to project himself as a champion of lawfulness and, therefore, to use the courts as the means to force elections now and, by sheer legal process, dislodge government.
The matter is therefore exceedingly simple. All the government-seekers want is a majority - Manning without going back to the polls if he can pull it off, and Panday and Maharaj through going back to the polls now.
And yet, the solution to our problems can hardly be Manning's holding on to government or our going back to the polls to give a party a clear majority. We must go back to the polls as quickly as possible to get parliament functioning with government and opposition, for that is our system of governance, but to focus on it is to misfocus.
Going back to the polls will not, for example, end ethnic polarisation and injustice, or prime ministerial dictatorship, or corruption - three of our major problems in postcolonial Trinidad and Tobago. There are severe socio-economic inequities in the land, some with too long a history, and the major ethnic victims are Afro-Trinidad, Indo-Trinidad, and Tobago. (For very good reasons, we must exclude French Creole-Trinidad.) Government, routinely in the pockets of party financiers (predictably of certain ethnicities and colorations), has run the country especially for the benefit of those financiers, as well as the ethnic group that its party most represents and is constituted of.
Which has meant that when Afro-Trinidad is in power, Indo-Trinidad and Tobago are in trouble, and when Indo-Trinidad was in power, Afro-Trinidad and Tobago were in trouble. Somehow Tobago is always, and French-Creole Trinidad never, in trouble. We could argue over the claim of 'trouble' until cocks get teeth, but what cannot be disputed is that Tobago has long seen itself as being barred from the national executive decision-making process, especially the budgetary process, and that French-Creole Trinidad is hardly ever bothered, given both the automaticity of their inclusion in the process and the maintenance of their economic inheritance.
Ironically, but not surprisingly (given the comparative recency of our nationhood and the complexities of socialisation and governance), when either Afro- or Indo-Trinidad is in government, large numbers of even their own people also find themselves not benefiting from the state of affairs.
Going back to the polls, as important as that is, is no guarantee that these problems will be rationally addressed. The national conversation therefore needs to radically change for a sustained focus on matters of equitable participation in government and equitable distribution of resources for the improvement of the standard and quality of living of all.
The Manning focus on staying in government and the Panday/Maharaj focus on immediate elections, both to the exclusion of far weightier matters, are likely to keep us mired in the stasis of socio-economic injustice from which most of us, regardless of ethnic character, desperately want to break free.
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