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That the new incumbent is a woman, of rural background, of Indian descent, forces academics to work outside the traditional tool box of investigation.
First out the post is Dr. Kris Rampersad, a journalist, lecturer and political observer in her own right. Rampersad has brought out a selection of Persad-Bissessar’s speeches showing how the path to power was cut and maintained right up to the weeks before that euphoric night of celebration.
What gives the author’s book an insightful quality is that it was launched the week before Persad-Bissessar’s massive electoral win. Few guessed what the result was going to be because commentators, inured by decades of assessing a two-party system along racial lines, hardly bothered to look behind the scenes at a fluid seething electorate, many voting for the first time.
Rampersad’s opening essay to the book, titled “A Clash of Political Cultures: Cultural Diversity and Minority Politics in Trinidad and Tobago”, sets new interpretations for future elected office holders. This essay could be a good starting point for political scientists taking a new look at the twin island republic’s evolution into its now open accepted multicultural face.
“The whole perception of TT society is that it is race-based, and projections coming out of this, are false,” she said in Toronto to promote her new book.
“We inherited a Westminster style system and interpreters of the two party system it posits presents and represents that in terms of race and in the process overlook that Opposition politics was really accommodating elements of the country's diversity that could not seem to find a place in the ruling party.
Both in terms of the physical presentations and in representations of the country as a whole, you get wrong interpretations of what this country is all about. Take for example, our Embassies, High Commissions and Consulates, they do not reflect, or represent the fullness of TT society; not the kind of society we know of a place where we have moved beyond racial tolerance to a casualness and comfortableness with each other and as a result we don’t have the kind of animosities and antagonisms seen in other societies coming to grip with their diversity.”
Rampersad points out that one of the enduring myths is that in sections of Trinidad there are Indian-only villages, or African-only suburbs. She insists that from times as long as one can remember, there have been peoples of different races living side by side, sharing ancestral values, and cuisines, for examples. Then you have the inevitable process of racial mixing. But it’s more than African or Indian; there’s Chinese, Syrian-Lebanese, European and Taino/Carib/Arawak. “There is no race based community in Trinidad, all are diverse. You must understand this if you want to understand the political face of the Republic and it seemed that the politics of the last 30 years has been unable to catch-up with this reality.”
Rampersad states with conviction that the evolution to a diverse political representation became more and more evident in the 1970s when cracks began appearing in the People's National Movement when key figures like Karl Hudson-Phillips and ANR Robinson abandoned the party. The victories of the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) in 1986, and the United National Congress (UNC) in 1996 are the manifestations of a broad power sharing.
It was in this period that the young wife of a doctor, Kamla Persad-Bissessar was thrust into the role first as alderman, then a parliamentarian, then Attorney General, then Acting Prime Minister. She might have come from a Hindu home, but her parents also had her baptised into the Spiritual Baptist Movement. During her law studies in Jamaica and otherwise, she expanded her cultural appreciation of other societies, strengths and weaknesses. Indeed, through the campaign and on election night, on stage, she danced to Bob Marley’s “One Love”, even as possibly a couple hundred tassa drums reverberated around the party headquarters.
Reading through this selection of speeches, you also see the wordings of broad representations, Persad-Bissessar’s loyalty to her boss, the Leader of the Opposition, and former Prime Minister, Basdeo Panday, in spite of jealousies and putdowns.
Remember too we are working in an outwardly machismo society, yet still inherently matriarchal. Feminists generally call this the “glass ceiling”.
Persad-Bissessar’s speeches, which represents over 60 years of the political history of the country and some 21 years of the political life of Mrs Persad-Bissessar shows she is no fluke to the nation’s highest elected office, that she had been addressing issues and problems when few cared to debate them. That she was not ever afraid to confront her allies or government ministers with blunt language. But she tempered her rhetoric with diplomacy, smiles and a sense of logic that was hard to refute; for example, her action confronting the Speaker of the House with his stupid decision banning laptops in Parliament when every other democracy in the world was incorporating them into the era of information led debate.
For lovers of Trinbago society, this is a good book to have, to appreciate the fullness of its roots, and as the author’s says, a good template for other emergent multicultural societies the world over.
The book is called Through The Political Glass Ceiling, Race to Prime Ministership by Trinidad and Tobago’s First Female – Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
(Reprinted with permission of The Caribbean Camera, Toronto, Canada).
Culture, gender and geography in the arena of politics - A new book by Dr Kris Rampersad
From the Trinidad Guardian
Book on Kamla launches today
by Shaliza Hassanali
A book highlighting the quest by the country's first female leader of the United National Congress, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, for prime ministership is to be launched today
Written by journalist, researcher and publisher Dr Kris Rampersad, the book entitled Through The Political Glass Ceiling–Race to Prime Ministership by Trinidad and Tobago's First Female is a compilation of selected speeches of Persad-Bissessar against the backdrop of contending minority-versus-dominant factors of culture, gender and geography, as T&T struggles for articulation and definition of a truly encompassing national identity. The book is expected to be launched at MovieTowne, Port-of-Spain, with the blessing and presence of Persad-Bissessar. Rampersad says the book presents the paradox of politics and society in T&T in the context of the contest for leadership between the country's longest standing political identity, the PNM, and Persad-Bissessar, who is vying for the office of Prime Minister. The book, consisting introduction, context and analyses ranges through the country's experiences with political parties under Dr Eric Williams to the period of voting deadlock at the turn of the century, involving Basdeo Panday and Patrick Manning.
Book on Kamla launches today, 20100515 by Shaliza Hassanali
A book highlighting the quest by the country's first female leader of the United National Congress, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, for prime ministership is to be launched today
Written by journalist, researcher and publisher Dr Kris Rampersad, the book entitled Through The Political Glass Ceiling–Race to Prime Ministership by Trinidad and Tobago's First Female is a compilation of selected speeches of Persad-Bissessar against the backdrop of contending minority-versus-dominant factors of culture, gender and geography, as T&T struggles for articulation and definition of a truly encompassing national identity. The book is expected to be launched at MovieTowne, Port-of-Spain, with the blessing and presence of Persad-Bissessar. Rampersad says the book presents the paradox of politics and society in T&T in the context of the contest for leadership between the country's longest standing political identity, the PNM, and Persad-Bissessar, who is vying for the office of Prime Minister. The book, consisting introduction, context and analyses ranges through the country's experiences with political parties under Dr Eric Williams to the period of voting deadlock at the turn of the century, involving Basdeo Panday and Patrick Manning.
‘How we vote is not how we party.’ At ‘all inclusive’ fetes and other forums, we nod in inebriated wisdom to calypsonian David Rudder’s elucidation of the paradoxical political vs. social realities of Trinidad and Tobago. Then we go back to sipping - rum, Guinness and Puncheon if one is UNC and believe in the Prime Minister, and if one is PNM - something else, yet-to-be-named by Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s united Opposition camp.
Our cultural repertoire has for long upheld our social underpinnings in unity, tolerance and camaraderie evident in part in Carnival, the ‘greatest show on earth’; while our political pundits continue to pronounce that voting in Trinidad and Tobago has largely been along ethnic lines, because the two major parties have largely ethnic bases.
We have accepted the validity of each posture and their nauseous compendium of evidence, giving little effort to understanding or explaining the paradox.
Absent in the political analyses is the fact that our politics makes us reluctant brides and bridegrooms of the PNM or UNC. Whether one is or wants to be one or the other, it stereotypes IndoTrinidadians as affiliates of the UNC and Afro-Trinidadians as loyal to the PNM. Any aberration to this - non-IndoTrini support for UNC and non-Afro Trini support for PNM - is dubbed the ‘cross-over’ vote of the ‘mixed’ population and the ‘floating’ (‘intelligent’) vote that is looking for a third party to latch on to whether it takes them into government or not (implying too that intelligence does not characterize either the PNM or the UNC, and if there are such elements, they too are aberrations).
Those (third) political parties that have failed to win seats have also dismissed the population as racially-driven on this basis of our two-party mentality, with little studied attempts to seriously identify why they failed to make the political grade, or seriously analyse their failures to adequately identify with and reach out to the populace in a manner that can swing voters out of the traditional, unappetizing, offerings.
The simple reality is in the two-party system that has developed in T&T, one is almost forced (so much for democratic right) - to choose one of the two political offerings. The alternative is to abstain, and deny oneself the option of franchise – only an option if one does not subscribe to the right to vote as the ultimate power in a democracy.
The National Alliance for Reconstruction’s victory in 1986 seemed poised to break the two party mould. Riding on its all inclusive ticket of ‘one-love’, the NAR – a coalition government – promised to prove that how we vote can be how we party with its overwhelming sweep of 33-3 seats. Unfortunately, it collapsed unto itself before it could so do.
It’s the Constitution, stupid!
Various other analyses tell us that the culprit is the T&T Constitution and there is an indisputable need for Constitution reform, given evident flaws in T&T Constitutions past and present. Both the 1961 (Independence) Constitution and the 1976 (Republic) Constitution were clearly already obsolete from their inception, with their unworkable British import of the first-past-the-post/winner-take-all-model and evident failure as they disenfranchise large numbers of voters as occurred in the 1981, 2001, 2002 and 2007 general elections.
The alternative, proportional representation, which offers each party numbers of seats in parliament according to the proportion of votes they command, has received some attention, but, like first-past-the post, it upholds a party-based system that gives politicians divine status and places them at the centre of decision-making, which we have seen, with demands for a bottoms-up approach, itself cannot hold.
The Wooding (1971) and Hyatali (1974) Commissions set up to explore Constitutional reform, proposed another, a mixed system drawing from first past the post and proportional representative models. This has been rejected by the PNM’s Williams and Manning, though all – PNM and the Commissions - premised their arguments on our diversity which they define largely as ethnic diversity.
Manning put forward in 2006 a ‘working document’ on Constitutional Reform, drawn up primarily by a one-man Commission (former President Ellis Clarke) and after-the-fact staged some public ‘consultations’ – an approach interpreted as paying lip service to public opinion. His draft provided for an executive President as in the USA which would give even more executive powers to an already maximum leader of the first-past-the-post system, without correcting (but rather further emasculating) those instruments and institutions that provide checks and balances on such ‘Massa’ power. These include the judiciary and the legislature, and others as the Ombudsman, the Director of Public Prosecution, the Commissioner of Police, the magistracy, Commissions for Integrity, Judicial and Legal Services, Police Service, Public Service, Teaching Service etc. It also proposes to restrict the principle of Freedom of Expression (the the Media) by altering the Bill of Rights.
Another Constitution, drafted by the self-assigned 2006 Fairness Committee of four leaned on a further amalgamation - of the Manning model (though produced before Manning’s) supporting an Executive President, along with a mixed system of proportional representation and first-past-the-post as recommended by the Wooding and Hyatali Commissions.
One challenge after the other to the Constitution has surfaced since the NAR to show that the Constitution is not just dog-eared, but coming apart at the seams and irrelevant in a rapidly changing world:
• The PNM’s challenge of Winston ‘Gypsy’ Peters dual citizenship
• The 2002 18-18 deadlocked elections which were not catered for in the Constitution;
• Other challenges, mainly related to cockfighting by Panday and Robinson - appointments through the Senate of persons who had been defeated in the polls;
• The chicken-and-egg crisis precipitated by the Standing Order for electing a Speaker before convening the House when neither party wanted to propose a Speaker
The Constitution, say the experts, has outlived its usefulness.
To justify his quest for an Executive President /US styled governance system, PNM leader Patrick Manning has sought to justify his high-handed approach to decision-making with arguments that the extremely diverse nature of the society and their many competing interests made it difficult to govern and needed ‘strong’ leadership. But at the risk of sounding like a prophetess, the diversity of T&T is indeed its primary character, and anyone who cannot manage our diversity is doomed to failure! Anyone who wants to govern effectively must unite the diversity rather than seek ever more exclusive power to overrule it; (the consequences of ignoring the public over an extended period have been graphically illustrated by the events of recent weeks).The experts tell us that the Constitution - and the West Minster styled parliamentary system it establishes cannot accommodate that diversity; others, like the PNM - undeniably the most experienced party in T&T – argue that neither could proportional representation. Both, it seems are partly in the right; but wholly wrong.
Leadership crisis – single party and coalition
The search for the ideal model has been around the debate of whether the single party or coalition government is the better model. Both have been tried and tested and found wanting. As analyst Dr Bishnu Ragoonath observed, the three occasions when our governments prematurely collapsed have been as single party governments – Panday’s in 2001 and Manning’s in 1995, and 2010. Majority rule by a maximum leader with powers equivalent to the Divine Right of Kings in a single party is losing sway on a population becoming more astute and unwilling to continue as blind, unquestioning sheep-like followers. Governance by any one majority ethnic group is become unsavoury to growing and more vociferous elements, demanding recognition of our cultural and other diversity, denied in Williams ‘No Mother India, no Mother Africa’ maxim which seemed not to grasp the complexity of the identity issue.
Nor have coalitions worked either; not two examples, the alliance governments of 1986 and 1991 - both of which evolved out of forces opposing the PNM and including Panday’s UNC, Robinson’s Democratic Action Congress, Karl Hudson-Phillips’ Organisation for National Reconstruction, Lloyd Best’s Tapia and various others. They failed not because the structure of the coalitions was tested, nor because of challenges of managing our complex diversity – they never got a chance. They failed because - as with the maximum leader mode of single party politics - managing the diverse egos of a man-rat driven political culture, continuously tested the Constitution and the governance model, promoting the eminence of constitutional lawyers and legal messiahs.
They failed because of unenlightened or misguided leadership that failed to respect the needs and wishes of its people.
Kamla’s People’s Partnership option
Now, Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s bid for the premiership proposes a People’s Partnership, in which the partners acknowledge and commit to her leadership. It presents another option for development and progress. The People’s Partnership seems neither of the winner-takes-all, nor of the proportional representation models, nor a mix of both. It appears to be a significant departure from all the models discussed above, no wonder many are still trying to come to terms with it.
By making all the diverse elements of the population potential winners: civil society, NGO, labour, youth, academics, opposition forces, the elderly, women, with the potential that they can all be represented in the Government, even without changing the Constitution , it has presented a platform closely representative of our diversity. It seems a bold way of circumventing the limitations of the Constitution’s winner-take-all modem, without the need to undertake the labourious and time-consuming Constitutional change or reform being posited. It answers the call for a new political paradigm in which people have a central and more active voice in governance; of a government driven from the ground up, rather than the top down. It is an expression of political will guided by the will of the people, which speaks directly to the leadership void. With each partner expressly, publicly and emphatically committing to recognising her as leader, one envisions she will rule the roost as a mother would her nest of clamouring, sometimes self-absorbed, chicks. She has proven herself not incapable of the task, having manoeuvred through the UNC’s macho-driven shenanigans of the last two decades, and obviously also out-manoeuvred her formidable competitors to inherit the coveted crown of leadership of the party while defying her predecessor’s threat that ‘none shall escape unscathed’ by effectively emerging ‘unscathed’ herself.
Where this will go, remains to be seen, but meantime, anticipating revisions to the strains of Rudder’s ‘how we vote is how we’ll party, I’ll drink to new directions.
Dr Kris Rampersad is an Independet thinker and Media Cultural and Literary Consultant kriscivica@gmail.com;
