21 December 2000, 807 words
The majority of Trinidadians understand little about democratic principles, and nothing about ethical ones.
This is the only logical conclusion I can draw from the results of last week's general election. Here we had a party which, within weeks of assuming office, started displaying all the characteristics of would-be totalitarians: attacks on the media, attempts to pass legislation that would limits citizens' rights, links with known insurrectionists, wooing of monied elites and religious fundamentalists, blatant nepotism and corrupt deals - all culminating in the voter-padding imbroglio.
And what happened? A huge portion of the electorate still came out in their numbers to vote for racial preference, paved roads, bogus education and a10-days wuk.
Now it may seem that the first sentence of this column should therefore apply only to UNC supporters. But tribalism, venality, and stupidity do not know racial or ethnic barriers. PNM voters did much the same thing for decades, and for the same reasons. It was they, not the younger ones, who came out in their numbers last week; and it was they who, when Patrick Manning announced that the PNM would be challenging Gypsy and Chaitan in court, clapped as enthusiastically as though Manning was announcing an electoral victory instead of a legal strategy.
Moreover, the fact that Manning is still leader of the PNM, even against his own promise that he would step down if the party lost, says everything about that party's political culture. Organizations tend to take their ethos from their leader or leaders, and the PNM lost largely because of its own vapidity. The only heat-generating body in the party is Keith Rowley (and apparently, judging from the amount of media attention she gets, Rain Newel-Lewis).
The typical Trini attitude was expressed by Hindu holy man Ravi-Ji, in a Guardian column written before the election. "Politicians are corrupt because today, corruption has become a norm in our society...We have to choose from what we have...[the UNC] will be voted in because of the undeniable evidence of its performance."
Now this is exactly what diehard PNM supporters used to spout in Eric Williams's heyday. I'd have thought that a holy man like Ravi-Ji would have expressed his moral stance against the acknowledged corruption by simply abstaining. But, of course, spiritual obligations haven't got a prayer against racial ones.
Besides, I have long noted that those who preach morality usually have little or no grasp of ethics, let alone democratic principles like freedom of speech and expression. That is why pastors Winston Cuffie and Clive Dottin threw their unstinting support behind the UNC.
The argument that if you don't vote you are not doing your civic duty is as nonsensical as the assertion that all atheists are immoral. Some of our most civic-minded and politically astute citizens made it clear that they had no intentions of casting their vote. I didn't, and I am damn sure I am more socially conscious and responsible than most Trinidadians.
At the same time, the fact that 37 percent of the electorate stayed away from the polls doesn't mean that they favoured None Of The Above. Lloyd Best argues that "Of the four core constituencies, this is the largest single one, the only one at the stage where what it puts first is Trinidad and Tobago."
Best, however, misses the point that, if the voting constituency can be broken into defined groups, so too can the non-voting one. The 37 percent also consists of people who are simply apathetic, who are indifferent, who don't vote because they can board the political gravy train by more efficient methods, as well as those who are making a statement by not voting. And I suspect it is the last group which is the smallest, and the first which is the largest.
What the election results mean (and will still mean no matter how the Gypsy/Chaitan and voter-padding fiascoes turn out) is that Panday and Ramesh and the UNC jefes have succeeded, or started to succeed, in their prime objective: to undermine and dismantle the core institutions of civil society. It is not that such institutions don't need dismantling. But the UNC's purpose in doing so is not to revamp, but to reinforce a political culture where money and tribalism are the keys to power, and where rule of law and public opinion carry no weight.
I have no idea where we are going after this. What I do know is that a democracy can function only when its elites adhere to democratic principles. But when a sufficient core of those wielding power begin to defy those principles, then the society has to depend on its armed forces to preserve democratic rule. Under the weight of that contradiction, however, democracy by that stage inevitably crumbles.
Copyright©2000 Kevin Baldeosingh