How Sierra Leone Collapsed after Independence—PART IV

Sareta Ashraph

By SARETA ASHRAPH

This is part 4 in a series that looks at how Sierra Leone, once known as the “Athens of West Africa” and blessed with mineral resources, fell into a brutal civil war a mere 30 years after independence in 1961. The series began in the February edition of the T&T Review with a look at how thing began to fall apart.
The analysis continues with an attempt to eventually answer the question: are there lessons for Trinidad and Tobago from Sierra Leone?

Foday Sankoh died five months before I first walked into the Special Court’s detention facility. He had been transferred into the Court’s custody in March 2003 from the main local prison on nearby Pademba road and was in extremely poor health. In prison since his arrest in May 2000, he appeared to have suffered several strokes which had gone untreated; it was also possible that he had been beaten while in prison. Though it was not being said publicly, it was unlikely he would ever be in a fit state to stand trial.
Though I never met him, he was present in almost every interview I conducted. The ex-fighters deified him; many were still loyal to him and what they saw as his revolution, stating that the atrocities were committed by fighters who turned away from Sankoh’s vision. His fighters called him ‘Pa’ and in return, he had referred to him to them as ‘his boys’.
A Temne with roots in Tonkolili district, Sankoh was not well-educated and made his living as a soldier and photographer in the Sierra Leone Army. Sankoh was relatively unknown in 1991; in fact, for the first few months of the war, Freetown’s newspapers speculated that Sankoh was simply a pseudonym under which Charles Taylor operated. Sankoh, however, would become synonymous with the conflict in Sierra Leone.
In 1971, Sankoh played a smaller role in Sierra Leone’s history when he, along with several other members of the armed forces, was arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting a plot by the military to overthrow Siaka Stevens’ government. Sankoh was imprisoned for 4 years in Pademba Road prison. On his release in 1975, he attempted to return to the army but was rejected on account of his conviction. Little is known of what Sankoh did between the time of his release and the late 1980s. He is said to have eked out a living as a photographer in Bo and Kenema districts. What is more certain however is that in the decade which followed his release he became interested in the left-leaning discussion groups that were furtively sprouting up all over the country. It was there that Sankoh was to receive his own ideological training.
The philosophy of Pan-Africanism, which called for a politically united Africa and which railed against neo-colonialism, found fertile ground in these discussion groups. In 1975, Colonel Ghaddafi, a fervent Pan-Africanist, published the first of his three volumes of political philosophy, also known as the ‘Green Book’. Ghaddafi’s brand of Islamic socialism was not accepted in its entirety: Sierra Leone’s Muslim, Christian animist communities got along too well for that. Still, the idea of a socialist government, capable of redirecting the flow of wealth away from foreign companies and self-enriching politicians and chiefs and providing a functioning welfare state, found favour in the increasingly radicalised underground discussion groups.

It was members of the Fourah Bay College (FBC) Student Union who first made contact with representatives of the Libyan government. Initially, student politicians were funded to attend conferences in Libya which discussed Green Book-inspired socialist philosophies.  In March 1985, following a student strike, the APC government expelled more than 40 members of the students’ union as well as a few teachers from the university. Shortly after their expulsion, a delegation led by the student union president Alie Kabbah, went to Tripoli. It was on this trip that Kabba made a request for commando training from the Libyan government. 
Groups from Sierra Leone started to travel to the Benghazi training base in Libya. According to the Truth and Reconciliation report, published in 2004, the first group of four Sierra Leoneans travelled to Libya in August 1987. Of the four people, one was Rashid Mansaray who was destined to become the RUF first Battlefield Commander.
Another one of the four, Victor Reider, today the SLPP spokesman, is credited with recruiting Sankoh into the Libyan training programme. Sankoh is said to have travelled to Libya for training with 3 others in April 1998. In Libya, the Sierra Leonean recruits met nascent revolutionaries from other parts of the world, including Liberia and the Ivory Coast. Although Charles Taylor, in his ongoing trial in the Hague, has denied any pre-war connection with Sankoh, it is widely believed that it was in Benghazi training base in 1988 that the friendship between the two was born.
Taylor’s route to Libya was more circuitous. While Sankoh was in prison in Sierra Leone in the 1970s, Charles Taylor was an economics student in Waltham, Massacchusetts. Taylor returned to Liberia in 1979 and supported the April 1980 coup which saw the murder of then President Tolbert, who was disemboweled in his bed by the coup leader Samuel Doe. Doe then took the reins as President of Liberia. Taylor was appointed as an officer in the General Services of Liberia but was fired in May 1983 for allegedly embezzling approximately one million dollars which was wired to a US bank account. He fled Liberia soon after and was arrested in Massachusetts in May 1984. His lawyer was Ramsey Clark, who was later to become US Attorney General.
In September 1985, while imprisoned in Massachusetts, Taylor and 4 other inmates staged a prison break. All the other inmates were recaptured and Taylor’s wife and sister-in-law were arrested for driving the get-away car. Taylor, however, was not apprehended and managed to travel out of the United States to an unknown destination, which may have been Libya or a West African state such as Ghana or Côte d’Ivoire.
In October 1987, the President of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, was murdered by one of his chief aides, Blaise Compaoré who then took up the Presidency. Taylor was rumoured to have assisted Compaoré and it was said that it was through Compaoré that a connection was made with Libya. In any event, when Charles Taylor met Foday Sankoh in Libya in 1988, Taylor was by far the more respected ‘revolutionary’: he was already well-known by several African heads of state and was likely to have been able to count on now President Compaoré’s support of his own revolution in Liberia. 

By this time, Sankoh had become a leader of the Sierra Leonean contingent in Libya following a split between Sankoh and Alie Kabba. Unlike Kabba or Rashid Mansaray, Sankoh was not an academic and, in confidential interviews with the TRC, some of Kabba’s circle described Sankoh’s grasp on ideology as being weak. Nevertheless it is clear that Sankoh was both a gifted orator and a strategist capable of gaining the support of backers for the future Sierra Leonean revolution. Some commentators believe that it was in Libya that Taylor and Sankoh reached an agreement: Sankoh and the men loyal to him would assist Taylor’s launching of the revolution in Liberia and once Taylor was in a position to do so, he would support Sankoh’s own revolution in Sierra Leone. In truth, there may never have been such an agreement: Taylor had both sufficient funds and the support to launch his own revolution while Sankoh did not. Attaching himself to Taylor may have the only viable option to Sankoh and would have provided him training bases for his men and a country bordering Sierra Leone from which to launch his war.
Sareta Ashraph was Defence Counsel at the Special Court for Sierra Leone from 2003-2009. She can be reached at saretaa@gclaw.co.uk. She thanks Daniel Eyre for his comments.

After The Gulf Oil Disaster

By FAYOLA BOSTIC

Pools of dispersed oil collect on a section of the public beach in Grand Isle, Louisiana. —Photo: Getty Images

“The energy business is very dangerous.” Most people who work in the energy sector readily agree with this declaration from BPTT CEO and chairman Robert Riley. Despite the risks, however, most of these people go to work fully expecting to return home after their shift. It is probably safe to assume that the eleven workers who died last April in the Deepwater Horizon platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico shared this expectation. For those in the energy sector, Riley said that the disaster is a reminder of how easy it is for things to go wrong. Investigations into the root causes of the explosion are not complete, but according to Riley, “BP is going to change and it’s going to happen fast.”
Just what those changes will look like will have to be seen. HSSE Director of BPTT, Tyrone Kalpee said that the Deepwater Horizon event caused the company to question whether it was doing things right. BPTT leads BP Global in safety performance, but Kalpee said that there is a need to “keep in a state of restless unease.”
Both Kalpee and Riley admitted that this way of thinking was not always the norm at BPTT. Kalpee estimated that it took about ten years to change what he called the company’s safety leadership culture. “People think that safety is either more expense or more people,” Kalpee said, “but we can’t demand performance without ensuring that people leave safely.”
The balance between focus on performance and focus on safety is not one that BPTT always got right. One technician who has worked on BPTT platforms for over thirty years said, “Long time, you could get away with a lot of things. Oil had to come from the ground and they didn’t care how you got it out.”
People who tried to speak out against unsafe practices were often victimized. Riley, who noted that fear was the greatest enemy of transparency, spoke of a time when workers were dismissed for reporting safety issues. Kalpee added that today, leaders found themselves having to work against these anecdotes. “People feel leaders are afraid of bad news,” he said. Now, company leaders pay much more attention to how they react to incidence reports. According to Riley, workers are encouraged to report hazards and to even stop unsafe work. “I’m sure it’s not perfect,” he admitted, “but we are seven times safer today than ten years ago.”
BPTT, which outsources most of its maintenance work to Neal and Massy Woodgroup and other smaller companies, is also demanding more from their contractors when it comes to safety. Riley said that most injuries are due to contractors. “In the past we didn’t count contractor injuries [as part of our safety indicators]. Now we don’t make a distinction.”
By having to meet certain pre-qualification standards before winning contracts with BP, Riley said that he feels that safety standards were rising among contractors. He still felt, however, that more still needed to be done on a national scale to ensure that standards did not fall when these same companies worked with local firms.
The company’s safety record in the last ten years is an achievement that the CEO said that he is proud of. On the other hand, he added that he also feels shame from being a part of a company that was involved in an incident of the scale of the Gulf of Mexico spill. The spill is the largest marine oil spill in the history of the industry.
While oil has stopped flowing in the Gulf and BP struggles to restore its reputation, work continues on the platforms off the coast of Trinidad. For workers, the disaster is a reminder of the risks they face everyday. For their leaders, it is a reminder of the awesome responsibility that they have to ensure that those risks are minimized. One technician put it this way, “If you are a police and you hear that another officer get shoot, do you leave the police force? No, you just make sure you wear your bullet-proof vest.”

…and 1970 March To Caroni
By Bhoendradatt Tewarie

The following feature address was delivered at a ceremony held by the Hindu Prachaar Kendra to honour Makandal Daaga at its headquarters in Enterprise on Sunday, August 15, 2010.

Geeta Vahini, HPK President, ties the raksha for HE Makandal Daaga during the ceremony of brotherhood and mutual protection.

We are gathered here to accomplish three things: to acknowledge the International Year of the Rapprochement of Cultures being observed by UNESCO; to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the march to Caroni which became perhaps, the most memorable gesture of rapprochement to come out of the 1970 revolt of the people; and to recognize the significant contribution of Makandal Daaga, now His Excellency, Ambassador to Caricom, to the goal of unity of the people of Trinidad and Tobago.
On February 18, 2010, Irina Bakova, the current head of UNESCO, launched the international year of the rapprochement of cultures in Paris, where UNESCO headquarters are located. She spoke then of “preserving cultural diversity and cultural identities and promoting intercultural dialogue.” The goal of the international year, she said, was “to help dissipate any confusion stemming from ignorance, prejudice and exclusion that create tension, violence and conflict”. She went on to observe that exchange and dialogue among cultures are the best tools for building peace.
This is the framework then, as well as the spirit within which we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the NJAC-led march to Caroni and the leadership role of Makandal Daaga in initiating the march to Caroni in April 1970.
That march to Caroni is worthy of commemoration for several reasons not the least of which was the sheer metaphorical power of the thought and act in the context of human and race relations in Trinidad and Tobago at the time.
It is important to recall that the ribbon development pattern of settlement in the country was aligned along two axes—-east/west and north/south. It is also important to remember that the Caroni River was indeed a symbolic as well as a real dividing line between urban and rural Trinidad; between the two major ethnic groups in our country, and, given the structure of our political party system at the time, a dividing line of ethno-political allegiance and alignment.
It is not appropriate on a day such as this, nor on an occasion such as this, to go over all the details of our national history surrounding the explosion of emotions in 1970, but a few salient facts are worthy of mention. In 1956, Dr Eric Williams was asked by the Colonial Governor to form the first ever party government in Trinidad and Tobago. The party of our first premier, the People’s National Movement (PNM), had campaigned throughout the length and breadth of the country and had spoken to the issues of anti-colonial nationalism on a national unity and nation building platform.
In 1958, a loose coalition of interests was able to win more seats than the PNM in local government elections. In 1959 a slightly more organized coalition of interests collaborating with parties in other West Indian territories, was able to win the federal election. Shortly thereafter, in a referendum in Jamaica, the citizenry voted not to be part of a federation. This brought the federation to collapse.
By 1961 the forces of opposition had consolidated under the Democratic Labour Party led by Dr Rudranath Capildeo. When election was called in that year, the entire campaign by both parties was so racially conceived and executed that it fiercely polarized the country along ethnic lines.
With the collapse of the West Indian Federation, the British government was eager to grant independence to both Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
In Trinidad and Tobago, it was an uneasy if peaceful independence road. Consultation at Queen’s Hall on the independence constitution had taken place without participation by the then opposition party and without widespread participation by the people. In the end, the 1962 independence constitution was settled in London at Marlborough house as a compromise between the premier and the leader of the opposition with the blessings of the British colonial office.

After independence, an unease was beginning to take hold of the society. Citizens began to sense that independence was bringing no fundamental economic, political or sociological change.
After the 1966 election, there was a decided restlessness in the air and growing disenchantment with the main political parties, PNM and DLP. A revulsion was emerging to ethnic politics and so, too, a debate about the meaning of independence.
In the world outside there was ferment—Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and an emerging women’s movement in the US; the Vietnam war, student protests across the US and Europe, and here in the West Indies an intellectual radicalization influenced by both local concerns about the failure to deliver on the promise of independence and international currents which seemed to promise the possibility of a new world order.
In Trinidad and Tobago in 1962, a young man, in the spirit of independence, formed a group called Pegasus. It was a group which focused on ideas and discussion and was nationalist and developmental in orientation. That young man was Geddes Granger.
In 1967, Geddes Granger as a student of the University of the West Indies became President of the Student’s Guild. He radicalized the campus even as a radicalization was taking place outside in the wider society. By 1969 protests and mobilization of interest groups had become widespread in response to a national government, under conditions of independence, that was becoming more and more repressive of the people and their aspirations and more neo-colonial in their exercise of economic decision making.
For most of 1969, the country was restless and turbulent with political activism, with questions being raised over and over again about the economic structure of ownership and distribution in the society. Geddes Granger was very much a part of this fermentation and created NJAC as a force for mobilization.
Events at Sir George Williams University in Montreal in which West Indian students were at the centre prompted protests of solidarity at the St Augustine Campus. The person we are honouring was head of the Students Guild. There was restlessness outside of the university as well. Ultimately all of these protest and mobilization interventions culminated in 56 days of demonstrations from February 26 to April 21, 1970. April 21 was the date of the historic march to Caroni. A state of emergency was called following the march.
Initially it was mainly an East West corridor and urban protest demonstration. For instance San Fernando was very much part of it. But not many Indians were eager to engage those involved in something called “Black Power.” It might not be unreasonable to claim that those who were leading the protests, perhaps intoxicated by the build up of protesters day after day, were perhaps blind to the non-involvement of the mass of the Indian population in the protests.
It is against this background that the gesture to the Indian community by the leader of the black power movement must be seen——as the recognition of an act of omission; as a genuine reaching out to the other; as a quest for inclusion and a desire for unity and peaceful collaboration; as a recognition of the need to address the psychological discomfort and insecurity of the mass of Indo-Trinidadians at the height of black power.
The Indians of the Caroni plains were cautiously receptive in 1970, receiving the largely Afro-Trinidadian protesters in peace and with warmth. They recognized and appreciated the symbolic nature of the gesture and accepted the spirit of good intentions—-peace, harmony, respect, unity, love.
The people had reached out to one another as the leaders of the conventional political parties became more and more alienated from them.
The story is, of course, more complicated than I have given here on this occasion when of necessity I must be at once brief and selective. And beyond mere complications there are complexities which warrant close examination.
But the march to Caroni led by Makandal Daaga in April 1970 to embrace the Indian community, to assuage their insecurity, pay them respect and include them to create a wider national movement must be acknowledged as a significant act of rapprochement worthy of commemoration 40 years later.
There may have been other motives—political strategy for instance— often motives, intentions, interventions and objectives involve complex dynamics—but that does not change the historical, sociological, cultural and political significance of the gesture and event.
Forty years later, Makandal Daaga is a leader of the People’s Partnership Government, Trinidad and Tobago’s Ambassador to Caricom having emerged from the 1970 protests and revolt as Makandal Daaga, Chief Servant. A careful look will reveal that in addition to other strands, the threads of connection with 1937 and with 1970 are woven into the wider tapestry of the People’s Partnership of 2010.
It is important to acknowledge that Makandal Daaga has been put in jail for his beliefs and his convictions and for organising protests against the Government of Trinidad and Tobago in 1970. It is important to note that Daaga has been systematically ostracised by the power structure of T&T. Beyond 1970 the people of T&T never supported him politically in an electoral sense, but he, the Chief Servant never abandoned his cause nor has he ever turned his back on his people.
His statement at the historic People’s Partnership meeting at Charlie King Junction in Fyzabad still rings in my ear: “The people are the government” he screamed, to remind us all that there is a purpose to politics, representation and governance.
I want to say something about the context in which Daaga acted in 1970. It would not have been easy for a young man to challenge a man of the stature of Eric Williams who would have represented to his loyal following in T&T not just leadership but deity.
It would not have been easy for a young black man to say that the so-called black nationalist movement was in fact fraudulent and had lost its way and had become an instrument of neo-colonialism and economic imperialism and a divisive force in a multi-ethnic society. This would have been seen by those who wielded power and carried in them an ethnic vision not as an attempt to liberate the race but rather to undermine race leadership. Look how hard it was for some of you in the Panday era! The reaching out to Caroni would have been viewed, too, as an act of sabotage against race-based political strategies of alignment and this, from the point of view of the beneficiaries of race politics in the country, would have been a starkly subversive act.
It is amazing and certainly a tribute to astute leadership that Makandal Daaga and NJAC have survived and made themselves sustainable to the point where, though winning no seats, the Chief Servant and his band of brothers and sisters can play at this time a constructive role in good governance and can continue to play a purposeful role as they have for decades in calypso and culture and educational work.

We salute Chief Servant Makandal Daaga today for strength of character, moral courage, vision, the capacity to sacrifice and his commitment to T&T and to the unity of our people. And for his larger vision for humanity, social justice and fairplay in the world. The spirit of his life has been one of rapprochement of cultures, of peoples and individuals.
Today’s event organised by the Hindu Prachaar Kendra is yet another welcome act of rapprochement and conciliation. For the Kendra to recognise His Excellency Makandal Daaga in this way and to commemorate Makandal Daaga in this way and to commemorate the march to Caroni 40 years later is also a symbolic act.
Raviji in particular has seized many initiatives to demonstrate that pursuing a Hindu agenda or dharmic trajectory can and must transcend parochialism and racial self-absorption. The Kendra has tried over time to make space and build bridges. They have for a long time reached out to the Orisha faith and Raviji is on to a new project which is bringing traditional religions together — Amerindian, Orisha, Hindu.
Raviji was also involved, I know, in the Rawle Gibbons’ play March To Caroni.
This particular event today has brought together the National Council of Indian Culture (NCIC), the Chinmaya Mission, the Amarjyoth Mandir, the Association of Traditional Religions, Citizens for Social Justice and UNESCO. I understand that this celebration was scheduled for the first Sunday in May but for various reasons had to be postponed.
Communities have not consciously embraced other communities in T&T except in a superficial way. The novelist Earl Lovelace has written about the veil that each community wears which is only occasionally removed for engagement on common ground. VS Naipaul has written of the masks that we wear to present ourselves and the secret mythological worlds that we create to construct an identity that can give us comfort and which may even be disconnected from the reality we live from day to day.
Perhaps the Hindu community is only now beginning to achieve a level of security where they can be comfortable enough to embrace other communities in a conscious and not necessarily self-conscious way. This is ironic because the philosophical underpinnings of Hinduism are deeply rooted in the concept of diversity — both in the sense of facilitating and fostering diversity and embracing diversity.
Let me close by saying that we have to earn the right to be embraced as well as the right to embrace. These are not entitlements, they have to be earned — a climate of reception, receptivity and national acceptance has to be created. This is relatively easy at an individual level- and we can see this in the way that we have learnt and grown to live with each other in this country at an individual level- at a community level it is much harder. It is something that one has to constantly work at. Mutual respect and mutual acceptance of the other are key. This is what no lesser person than Adam Smith called ‘moral sympathy’, the ability to walk in the shoes of the other and to understand his/her thinking and feeling.
So we celebrate today because Makandal Daaga has earned our embrace. We celebrate, first, the International Year of Rapprochement of Cultures; second, the 40th anniversary of the march to Caroni — April 1970, and third, the contribution of Makandal Daaga to the rapprochement of our diverse peoples and the courage it took to stand up for something he believed in 40 years ago.
And finally let us also celebrate this glorious reaching out of the Hindu Prachaar Kendra now under the leadership of Geeta Vaahini and all the associated groups that came together to strengthen unity, harmony and purposeful engagement.

By HORACE CAMPBELL

Edward Seaga

The arrest of Christopher “Dudus” Coke in a road block in Jamaica on Tuesday, June 22, 2010 opens the possibility once and for all to reveal the full extent of the corruption of the politics of Jamaica and the Caribbean by the rulers in collaboration with the intelligence, commercial and banking infrastructures of the United States
From the streets of West Kingston to the hills of Port of Spain, Trinidad to Guyana and down to Brazil, gunmen (called warlords) allied and integrated into the international banking system had taken over communities and acted as do-gooders when the neo-liberal forces downgraded local government services.
From the garrison community of Tivoli gardens, Christopher Coke was hailed as a force more powerful than politicians. Such was power of Coke (called the ‘Pres’ by his supporters and the media) that the prime minister of Jamaica, Bruce Golding, tried to block his extradition to the United States. For a short period from August 2009 to May 2010, the Jamaican government protected Coke and hired a US law firm to lobby against his extradition. The US government intensified pressures against the Jamaican middle classes, threatening them with the withdrawal of their visas. This pressure and public opinion forced the government of Jamaica to issue a warrant for the arrest of Coke on 17 May 2010.
After the warrant was issued, the military and police forces entered the garrison stronghold of Coke to capture him. After the shooting stopped, 73 persons in Tivoli, three members of the occupation forces and ‘accountant’ Keith Clarke were killed and large numbers injured. Coke was in hiding because he feared ending up like his father, Jim Brown, who had been the don of Tivoli and had died mysteriously in a fire while he was incarcerated in Jamaica awaiting extradition to the United States.
Although the western media has spun this story to exclude the US intelligence agencies as well as Israeli mobsters, the tales of Christopher Coke reveal the reality that peace and reconstruction in the Caribbean is inseparable from demilitarisation and exposure of the US banking and intelligence services.

THE CIA, GUNMEN AND POLITICS IN JAMAICA

Michael Manley

The arrest of Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke in Kingston has reopened the issues of the use of thugs and gunmen to intimidate the poor in Caribbean. From Mexico to Guyana and from Brazil to Trinidad, gunmen and criminal elements integrated into the cocaine, guns, politics and banking business terrorize the poor and ensure that international capitalism thrives on the backs and bodies of the most oppressed. Dudus had inherited a criminal infrastructure from his father (the already mentioned Jim Brown) that had been organized by politicians to coerce and intimidate the working poor.
At the height of his power, Dudus had taken over the community of Tivoli Gardens in West Kingston and was from a long line of political enforcers with names such as Claudie ‘Jack’ Massop, Bya Mitchell and Jim Brown. These enforcers had been active in the community of Tivoli Gardens established as a base for counter revolutionary violence by a sociologist-turned-politician named Edward Seaga.
Edward Seaga had exploded on the political scene in Jamaica after 1959 speaking for the ‘have-nots’. With the victory of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in the elections for independence in 1962, Seaga emerged as a powerful minister and had established Tivoli in 1965 as a base for the JLP.
The establishment of Tivoli was not an accident. As one facet of the redevelopment of downtown Kingston and ‘urban renewal,’ Tivoli was created to counter the positive and radicalizing influence of the Rastafari community that had its biggest base in an area then called Back o’ Wall. The sociology of oppression was backed up by bricks, mortar and guns; Tivoli was built on the destruction of Rastafari communities. (I have documented the important role of the Rastafari in Jamaican society in the book, ‘Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney’).
The Rastafari had understood the importance of the establishment of this community against them; in the early seventies Bob Marley composed the Reggae song ‘Concrete Jungle’ with reference to this community. Those who supported the People’s National Party were bulldozed out of the area and drifted to the eastern part of Kingston, where they established communities with names such as Dunkirk. Political rivalry that had been conducted with knives, barbs, sticks and stones was now dominated by men armed with guns.
Michael Manley was swept into power in Jamaica in the elections of 1972. Tivoli achieved notoriety during the seventies as a stronghold for gunpersons loyal to the JLP and in response to this form of housing complex. Michael Manley built his own housing complex for his supporters. The emergence of these competing housing schemes in the urban areas was reinforced by a system of contracts where the political henchmen were given government contracts for construction and other make work schemes. These communities were called “garrison” communities in Jamaica.
Instead of denouncing and critiquing the manipulation of the oppressed, sociologists called the gangster political love-fest “patronage” and “clientism”. Innocent sounding academic phrases such as ‘the disbursement of the discretionary favours of Government’ concealed a more deadly relationship between the poor and the government.
One continues to witness the poverty of the sociological cover-up with the op-ed contribution of H. Orlando Patterson in the New York Times (May 28) entitled, ‘Jamaica’s Bloody democracy’. It is this kind of social science that obscures the depth of oppression of the poor in the midst of the capitalist crisis.

THE CIA AND
MICHAEL MANLEY
Despite espousing a brand of democratic socialism, Michael Manley did not break the relationship between political enforcers and the political parties. In fact, Manley surrounded himself with notorious gunmen such as Burry Boy, and the militarisation of politics intensified in this period.
If Michael Manley did not take seriously his own rhetoric about Democratic Socialism, the US government and the CIA was sufficiently unnerved by the radicalization of the Jamaican society under the PNP leadership to embark on wholesale destabilisation of Jamaica. The whole world was now paying attention to the leftward turn of Jamaica and this turn to peace and justice was most manifest in the lyrics of Reggae artists in the seventies. Bob Marley also became a victim of the indiscriminate violence in 1976 when he offered a free concert in the midst of the CIA inspired violence and killings in Jamaica. Peter Tosh was also consumed by this violence and met an early end.
It was at this time that the CIA found a ready pool of gun-men and political contractors who were already ensconced in Tivoli Gardens. Lester Coke, also known as Jim Brown, father of Dudus, was one of the major enforcers who benefitted from the CIA relationship with the party headed by Edward Seaga. The 1980 election was one of the bloodiest in the history of Jamaica, with hundreds dead and thousands dispersed.
This counter revolutionary phase in the Caribbean reached new levels in the Caribbean as the CIA supported the Contras in Nicaragua, the militarists in El Salvador and the conservative military forces throughout the Caribbean. It was in this period that Walter Rodney was assassinated in Guyana and Archbishop Romero was assassinated in San Salvador. Manley was defeated in the elections of 1980.

TIVOLI GARDENS, THE SHOWER POSSE AND THE COCAINE BUSINESS
In 1980 when Edward Seaga became the Prime Minister of Jamaica the society was deployed at the service of the US counter revolution in the region. It was not by chance that the Prime Minister of Jamaica was at the forefront of those giving military, diplomatic and political cover for the US invasion of Grenada in 1983.
In this period when the CIA was fighting against the Contras, the export of cocaine from Colombia was one means of providing the financial resources for the campaign of destabilisation. This has been established by the Senate Committees of the US which revealed that, while Ronald Reagan was carrying forth a war on drugs, the CIA was importing cocaine into the US using the US military and the air force. Gary Webb has also detailed for posterity the role of the CIA in the cocaine business in the book, ‘Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion’.
Jamaica became central to this dark alliance during the period when the JLP government was in power, 1980-1989. In order to establish a firm entrepreneurial basis for the distribution of cocaine in the Caribbean, the forces of Lester Coke organized the Shower Posse in Tivoli with a worldwide reach into other parts of the Caribbean, Canada, the USA and Europe.
The gang got its name from the JLP election slogan ‘Shower’, which was a response to the PNP’s ‘Power’ that was coined from Manley’s ‘Power for the people’ slogan in the 1970s. One other source has noted that the name “shower” was taken from a speech by Edward Seaga where he promised that: ‘Blessings will shower from the sky and money going jingle in your pockets.’ Seaga knew that this money was not coming from the production of goods and services within Jamaica.
In tandem with the CIA contra wars, there were immense opportunities for entrepreneurs and militarists to be conduits for the cocaine trade with its multi-billion dollar payoffs. With high unemployment in the society, there was a steady pool of youths who could be ensnared into the business of running guns and drugs. Lester Coke who had succeeded Claude Massop as the top gun of Tivoli built the Shower Posse and exploited the cocaine trade to amass great wealth and opulence.
Lester Coke (Jim Brown), managed the Jamaican operations from the political constituency of the prime minister of Jamaica, Edward Seaga, while confidante Vivian Blake, the other kingpin of the posse, managed the North American operations, with cells of the Shower Posse in New York, Miami, Kansas City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and other cities. Vivian Blake went through trials, extraditions, business ventures until he succumbed to death in 2009. Many in Jamaica do not believe that Blake died of natural causes.

      ISRAELI MOBSTERS, COCAINE
AND J’CAN POLITICS

So lucrative was the business of cocaine and guns that there was an economic boom in the society, with the establishment of new banks and the growth of the Cayman Islands as a major offshore banking site to launder the billions of dollars of the cocaine business. The Shower Posse boomed in this period, and with the boom was an escalation in the levels of violence inside and outside Jamaica. One book entitled, ‘Born Fi Dead’, chronicled the savagery of this gang of mobsters tied to the ruling political party in Jamaica. The Jamaican Posses became notorious enough to be featured on the television programme ‘American Gangster’. But this gangsterism was not confined to the Americas. The business was lucrative enough to lure Israeli mobsters into this booming business.
Eli Tisona (who was called one of the top Israeli mobsters by the Jerusalem Post) appeared on the Jamaican scene at this point as a business person involved with a supposed high tech agricultural scheme. Tisona, with no known experience in agriculture, was supposed to be the brains behind a scheme of the Prime Minister Edward Seaga for the establishment of an agricultural complex called Springs Plain that was supposed to sell winter vegetables to the United States.
It turned out that this was just another front for the transfer of cocaine from Colombia to the United States through Jamaica. During the Seaga period, the planes that were leased to fly out the winter vegetables flew from Colombia before collecting the ‘vegetables’ from Jamaica. At this period International Lease Financing Corp (ILFC), the Los Angeles-based aircraft leasing division of AIG, was the biggest force in the leasing of planes. AIG worked closely with the US intelligence services to the point where the CEO of AIG was once under consideration to become the director of the CIA.
After the end of the Cold war and the defeat of Edward Seaga, Tisona was arrested and jailed in the United States on charges of fraud and money laundering. In 1997, an Israeli Knesset committee report named Eli Tisona and his brother, Ezra, as being the country’s two most powerful drug lords. Tisona was jailed in the US in 1999.
While Tisona was functioning as an ‘agricultural expert’ in Jamaica, Lester Coke was growing in power inside the constituency of the prime minister. When the IMF proposed the reduction of government expenditures on health, education and other social services, the dons with their largesse from the cocaine trade became community benefactors doling out goodies to the poor. According to one press report:
‘As those street forces increased their trade in illicit drugs, more arms were brought in and the extortion racket, otherwise known as “tax”, was partitioned off along PNP and JLP lines. Much more importantly, the dons became the effective government as most of these taxes were used to fund the poor and send their children to school, feed them and assist in dealing with health matters and the funerals of old people.’
As the effective government in areas such as Tivoli, dons such as Lester Coke did not depend on elections for their power, and after Edward Seaga was defeated in the 1989 elections, Lester Coke, otherwise known as Jim Brown, was emerging to be more powerful than the former prime minister in his own constituency, Tivoli. Lester Coke was operating Tivoli as a state within a state beyond the reach of the official forces of the Jamaican government. In fact, the business of cocaine was so lucrative that the Lester Coke connections interpenetrated all levels of commerce, banking, the legal community, the media and the clergy as well as the political parties.
With unmatched resources, Lester Coke started to act as though he was above all laws, and beyond the reach of justice. After a series of high profile killings in the early nineties, the US sought to extradite Lester Coke to the United States.
Lester Coke had not known that he was expendable. When he realized this and was ready to expose the vast web of guns, banks, politicians and cocaine, he died mysteriously in a fire in police custody while awaiting extradition to the United States.

          DUDUS,  INHERITOR OF THE
CRIMINAL INFRASTRUCTURE

In the era of neo-liberal capitalism and imperialism, the international cocaine trade was one of the most lucrative businesses in the world. Neo-liberal ideas benefitted the purveyors of free movement of capital and drugs. In this neo-liberal world, the dons became powerhouses in Jamaica. They had more resources than the politicians and there was a degree of cooperation between them as they agreed on their geographic territory. While the PNP was in power under P.J. Patterson, PNP dons became powerful in the society and this power was manifest when Donald ‘Zekes’ Phipps was arrested and charged by the police for attempted murder, illegal possession of a firearm and unlawful wounding.
Zekes was respected by the opposition dons to the point where they joined in a protest against his arrest. While he was being interrogated at the Central Police Station, Zekes’ supporters rioted, leaving four persons – including two policemen – dead. It was not until Zekes appeared on the balcony of the police station and ordered his followers to return to their homes that the demonstrations ended. With Zekes in the eastern part of Kingston and Dudus in the western part of Kingston, the ruling class had the society sewn up so that there could be no real political organizing by an independent force outside of the gangster political forces.
Dudus had inherited the infrastructure of his father after the murder of his elder brother, Mark ‘Jah T’ Coke. Another brother, Michael ‘Chris Royal’ Coke, was killed by the police. Edward Seaga was sufficiently threatened by the rise of the power of Dudus within Tivoli that Seaga labeled Dudus a ‘troublemaker.’

THE EXTRADITION SAGA

Dudus became so powerful inside and outside Jamaica that he was called ‘president’. Urban legend credited Dudus as being the decider as to who should inherit the constituency of Tivoli Gardens after Edward Seaga resigned from active politics in 2005. Earlier, as a leader of the opposition, Seaga had given the name of Dudus to the police but Dudus was not touched. In 2005 Bruce Golding became the Member of Parliament for Tivoli Gardens in Western Kingston and in 2007 his party, the JLP, won the general elections. Bruce Golding became the Prime Minister at this time. But Golding was never as resourceful as Dudus so he had to operate in Jamaica with the blessings of the organisation and resources of Dudus.
These facts are now known after the Prime Minister of Jamaica attempted to block the extradition of Dudus to the United States.
In August 2009, Dudus was charged by a grand jury in the southern district of New York with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and cocaine and to traffic in firearms during a period from 1994–2007. According to the charges, the acts described in the indictment violated the laws of the United States. Pursuant to an extradition treaty between the two countries, the US issued Diplomatic Note No 296 on 25 August 2009 requesting Coke’s extradition.
Prime Minister Golding adopted a pseudo anti-imperialist posture opposing the extradition of Dudus and went on the offensive against the US claiming unspecified ‘breaches’ in the gathering of the US wiretap evidence. Golding avoided the obvious double standard of the US government in the whole question of extraditing terrorists and murderers. Luis Posada Carilles, a Cuban born and naturalized Venezuelan, is wanted in the Caribbean and Latin America, in connection with his involvement in the 1976 bombing tragedy of a Cubana aircraft off Barbados in which 73 people on board perished. Successive US administrators refused to hand over Posada Carilles who had been active in the Caribbean at the same time when the CIA was destabilizing the region of the Caribbean. Golding did not mention this case when he was opposing the extradition of Dudus.
Prime Minister Golding’s weakness did not end at his pseudo anti-imperialism in attempting to block the extradition of Dudus. Progressive journalists in the Caribbean exposed the double standards of the US media in their claim to be opposed to gun violence in the Caribbean, but the prime minister of Jamaica aided and abetted both the forces of the US and the gangsters in Tivoli. This aid reached the point where the Jamaican government engaged the legal services of a firm in Washington, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, to lobby the US government on the extradition issue of Coke. Urban legend among the poor suggested that it was Dudus that was paying the Jamaican government for the legal services of this top-notch legal firm in Washington. Inside Jamaica, Dudus was being represented by a senior senator from one of the royal families of the Jamaica Labour party, Tom Tavares-Finson.
After months of jockeying and manoeuvring between the Jamaican government and the government of the USA, the US started to deny visas to select members of the ruling class of Jamaica. Along with this pressure, the US issued its Narcotics Control Strategy Report of March 2010 stating that the ruling party’s well-known ties with Coke highlighted the ‘potential depth of corruption in the government’.
Sections of the Jamaican ruling class panicked under this pressure and after months of declaring that the sovereignty of Jamaica had been breached, on 17 May, the government of Jamaica issued a warrant for the arrest of Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.
Two days after the government of Jamaica issued a warrant for the arrest of Dudus, residents of the garrison community began to mount barricades as sections of West Kingston, including the downtown business district, became tense. One day later on 20 May, hundreds marched in support of Coke. Some compared Dudus to Jesus and said they were willing to die for him.
And they did die by the dozens after the soldiers and the police invaded Tivoli.
Prime Minister Golding declared a state of emergency and unleashed the coercive powers of the state to catch a gangster who weeks before he had been protecting. In the ensuing battles between the citizens of Tivoli and the coercive forces, dozens were killed and hundreds wounded. Dudus was nowhere to be found in the dragnet of the house to house search in the garrison community.
But the actions of the police went beyond the dragnet in Tivoli. Houses were searched all over the upscale neighbourhoods of Kingston. In one such search, Keith Clarke was killed. Another urban legend said that Clarke was the accountant of Dudus and that he was assassinated so that he would not expose the full expanse of the Dudus empire.
During these high profile searches, other major political and religious leaders knew of the whereabouts of Dudus. In fact, the media reported that while the police were searching for Coke and killing innocent citizens, one member of the clergy had met with Dudus on 31 May. Twenty-two days later, Dudus was stopped in a roadblock with another member of the clergy. A report in the media was that Dudus wanted to be conveyed directly to the US embassy. He was afraid that if he were to remain in police custody in Jamaica, he would meet the same fate as his father.

TRUTH COMMISSION IN JAMAICA

The international market for illicit drugs is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise. The UN has conservatively estimated that this branch of capitalism grosses over US$300 billion each year. From Afghanistan to Coloumbia and from Guinea Bissau to Mexico, this international trade and military forces intersect to create killings, confusion and fear. The coast of West Africa is now seeing a repeat of the history of the Caribbean as a transshipment point for cocaine. Recent stories of the uncovering of US$2 billion worth of cocaine in the Gambia exposed one indication of the growth of this form of capitalism in West Africa. Drawing from their experiences of covering the tracks of drug dealers in the Caribbean, the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) now presents the fight against drug trafficking as one of the justifications for this US military force in Africa.
The Anglo-American media has worked hard to distort the true history of the linkages between cocaine and politics in the Caribbean. Despite the crisis, the opposition PNP dare not call for a full exposure of the truth of Dudus because the PNP dons are compromised by the trade in cocaine. Both political parties in Jamaica have been opposed to a truth commission to detail the extent of the relationships between gangsters, politicians, bankers and the cocaine trade. The violence and carnage in Jamaica that gave Jamaica the label of the murder capital of the world did not seriously affect the tourist industry. The political leaders had organized the garrison communities and the tourist industry in such a way that those profiting from tourism and gangsterism would continue to do business, regardless of whether there was a state of emergency in Jamaica or not. By the first decade of the 21st century there was not one poor community in Jamaica that was not besmirched by the violence and the killings. The rich lived in sealed and gated communities while the poor lived in constant danger. The real tragedy was that the scale of the violence acted as a prohibitive factor for real political organising of the poor.
This scale of gangsterism and neo-liberalism is to be found in all parts of the Caribbean. New networks of peace, justice and truth remain throughout the region exposing the corruption of the societies. The traditional left, silenced by the quagmire of the implosion of the Grenadian revolution are sidelined as the youth search for new forms of political engagement.
Political retrogression, gangsterism and violence have now reached the proportions that were similar to the period of enslavement. This was the period when black life was worthless. Yet, it was in the midst of the most dismal period of oppression when the enslaved of Haiti rose up and built a revolutionary movement that shocked the world.
The politics of truth in the Caribbean will have to build on the lessons and positive features of the Haitian and Cuban revolutions to transcend the new traditions of gangsterism, fraudulent bankers, politicians and their gun-toting dons. The struggle against the cocaine business in the Caribbean is a struggle for a new form of society. In the interim, it is hoped that Dudus did make the tape while he was in hiding so that the entire political establishment can be exposed as enablers of the international gangsterism that is hidden behind the War on Drugs.

Horace G. Campbell is a Professor of African Studies and Political Science at
Syracuse University in Syracuse New York. He is the author of Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney, Reclaiming Zimbabwe and, most recently Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics.

Perhaps it’s the recession, but honeymoons don’t seem to linger as long they once used to. In no time flat, the People’s Partnership is having to buckle down to the serious task of running the country under the demanding gaze of an impatient electorate, insistent on delivery from their daily dread.

Fortunately, there is an impending respite in the form of this month’s Local Government election which could cover the multitude of sins that could afflict the unprepared.

For the next three weeks or so, we could expect to be entertained, though perhaps not  as royally as we were by the dramatic theatre of the general election.

But, eventually, buckle down we all must. The madness of Manning’s methods has left a tangle of  decisions that could confuse and distract the business of government for years. If the Persad-Bissessar administration is not careful about keeping focused, it could end up chasing ghosts for the rest of its life and, in the process, becoming a ghost itself

Since 1986, when we began changing government with regularity, there has not been an administration that has not been surprised by the reality of being in office.   Invariably, the Treasury is more empty than was suspected; contractual obligations more onerous than expected; the steepness of the learning curve to have been much more respected.

With the treadmill on high-speed, the prime minister has moved herself front and centre of national life, assuming proportions larger than life, perhaps in hopes that her back is broad enough to shield the stumbles and fumbles of a team trying to get its act together. Invariably, some are more successful than others. Thus can maximum leaders be born, as the key asset is transformed, over time, into the only asset and when the relationship between leader and led becomes so direct  that it precludes mediation by all else.

But this is 2010, not 1956 and Kamla Persad-Bissessar has the advantage of the accumulated degree of self-knowledge that our philosophers and poets have distilled over the course of roughly 50 years of Independence. It would be devastating if she were to encourage our sick relationship with power to derail the growing instinct towards participation and representation. If she did, we might discover that One Woman rule is far more potent than One Man rule if only because of the complication of the Mother complex.

Across the aisle, inside the PNM, Keith Rowley retires the Rottweiler as he prepares to take on the challenge of his life.   It won’t be easy.  The PNM’s assumptions of being the natural party of government run too deep for engaging the challenges of modern Trinidad and Tobago. As successive administrations of the PNM and others, have shown, electoral success can be a stunting experience as the world divides along the simple lines of those who have and those who want. Without the twin warriors of  Death and Defeat , it is hard to see what in the PNM would have allowed conditions for a change of leader. Were it similarly afflicted by the disease of office, the UNC, too, would have remained in thrall to the leadership cult of the weak that produced and sustained a Patrick Manning.

Together, Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Keith Rowley represent an opportunity for evolution of the politics. Both have found their way onto the front stage of T&T’s politics at a time when the entire world is grappling for a more relevant philosophy of government. In a world of better educated people living beyond borders, the old order of geo-sovereignty and representative politics is fading into irrelevance as people move beyond the pale of government to represent themselves.

In theory, at least, both leaders have what it takes to strike up new conversations with this nation. Apart from the instincts of their own individual intelligence, there has not been enough in their political experience to prepare them for the world in which they are called to lead. As Manning showed, you can’t buy it; as Panday showed, you can’t wing it.

Kamla is the luckier of the two. While career and office have combined to shelter Keith Rowley, she experienced the vicissitudes of the hard knock life of opposition. Even moreso than Kamla, Rowley needs to discover what he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know- an impossible journey if one is trapped in a concept of leadership that requires one  to simply look and sound the part while waiting for the government to implode.

But every moment of change is an opportunity for hope. Despite the nonsense being spewed about strategic planning etc  from  certain PNM quarters, one remains hopeful that the Rowley leadership will reach beyond Machiavelli and the corporate life to begin to ground the party in the real politics of T&T.

Trinidad and Tobago needs a resurrection of the engagement of ideas  if the politicians it produces are to arrive in office with even a minimal grasp of the  challenges  that go beyond the sharing of spoils. The idea that one could land in office and survive on a daily diet of expert advice is a recipe for national indigestion. Above all, those who aspire to public service through electoral politics need to have a coherent understanding of what makes this place and its people tick- the modern imperatives that derive from its history, its topography, its ecology, its cultural tributaries and how they have shaped the water courses of our lives. And more… so much more.

May a million conversations begin.

(Sunity Maharaj)

Converting Love Into Productivity

By BRINSLEY SAMAROO

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar

It may be the usual post-election honeymoon, but it seems that since the May 2010 general election, the population has begun to exhale.  The galloping national anxiety over the high-handedness of the Manning regime has given way, at least for now, to a sense of ease that comes from the self-confidence of a people who have proven to themselves that when it matters, they are capable of acting in their own interest and defence.

The population is maturing. In deciding to transfer their mandate from the Manning administration to the People’s Partnership, the people stepped in and regained control of their destiny, creating room to change course and chart a new direction with a government that offered itself as one willing to partner with them in the process of national development. In response, Kamla Persad-Bissessar has made a point of reaching out as a kinder, gentler- even maternal- leader. The first- and possibly the most important- achievement of the Kamla-led government, therefore, has been to make people relax and feel loved again.

As the political careers of Eric Williams and Basdeo Panday would show, love between leaders and their people is not something to be under-estimated. The challenge, however, is to harness public love and goodwill into quantifiable elements of productivity and output for the purpose of national development.

On Saturday 12 June, 2010, Finance Minister Winston Dookeran made this very point as he launched his Tunapuna People’s Partnership, declaring that releasing the positive energies of the people through volunteerism was one way of dealing with the parlous state of the Treasury.

The task calls for a combination of populist politics and strategic management- which is not beyond Kamla Persad-Bissessar who brings to her portfolio an enormous ability to multi-task.

After graduating with a first degree in English Language and Literature (1974), she embarked on a career of work and study while being a wife and mother. Whilst teaching at St Andrews High School in Jamaica, she studied for her Bachelor of Education degree (1976) and whilst teaching at UWI and at Lakshmi Girls High School in St Augustine, she diligently pursued law studies, gaining her Bachelor of Laws degree in 1985 and her licence to practise law in 1987.

During this time, she also entered politics with the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) beginning in 1985. More recently, whilst practising law, being MP for Siparia  and, in 2006, being Leader of the Opposition, she was able to complete an Executive MBA at UWI.

She brings to the job, therefore, not only her multi-tasking ability but a sound academic background in the English Language, in practical and theoretical teaching approaches; in legal expertise and in management .

Added to these attributes is her long and challenging political journey, from Alderman in the St Patrick County Council (1987-1991), to her unsuccessful contest  (1991) for the Siparia seat  as a NAR candidate; to her repeated side-lining by the male-dominated political hierarchy (both UNC and PNM) which relegated women to what Eric Williams once famously referred to as his “kitchen cabinet”.

These political experiences have given Kamla a good sense of timing and a clear understanding of the madness which afflicts men in their quest for dominance. Her maternal aura has certainly been an asset in promoting healing along party lines, both before and in the immediate aftermath of a bitterly fought general election.

The new hands-on leadership style was clearly demonstrated on the very day of swearing-in when the Prime Minister stopped the partying to go and look after flood-stricken residents. In doing so, the PM immediately drew a line between the leadership style of her predecessor in office and herself. She has continued in that vein, touching people and, in so doing, giving life to her credo that those elected to office are the servants of the people. Some of her ministers have followed this example: Vasant Bharath with the cassava farmers in Caparo and Prakash Ramadhar among flooded-out residents in Oropune among others. The Prime Minister’s self-confidence, honed by hard knocks, can be seen in the manner in which she has opted to bring strong individuals into her government, rather than neophytes who would owe their political existence to her.

In fact, she has sent a strong message about qualitative leadership in reducing the trappings of office. Witness her offer of the PM’s residence to the President; the removal of the nation’s coat of arms from the PM’s car and the gentle toning down of the police presence around her as she seeks to maintain touch with the media and with Tom, Lisa and Harrylal.

So, one can say she’s off to a promising start:

• She has a Cabinet that is beginning to settle in

• She has dented whatever anxieties might have existed about race and gender in the immediate aftermath of the elections

• She has created no situations, thus far, to give credence to the fears about the ability of the People’s Partnership to cohere in office.

But while this phase may very well set the tone for her government into the future it is after all, just the opening phase.

The proof of the pudding is going to come in the months and years ahead as the electorate judges her leadership by her ability to improve the quality of their lives.

In this regard some of the key markers ahead would be:

1) The Parliamentary Agenda: What are the Govt’s legislative priorities and what impact will it have on  enhancing the lives of the people? More than anything, people want to see an end to the kicksin’ in parliament and that those elected to represent them are serious about the people’s business. So the restoration of not just dignity, but purpose and democracy to Parliament are critical.

2) The Budget: The Minister of Finance has inherited the task of making good on a range of platform promises that have to be kept. One doesn’t envy his job, given his report that things are much worse than expected at the Treasury. There is going to be a tremendous job of communication to be done by the leadership in helping the population to understand how the choices are being made and why. This is never an easy job. It is not going to be good enough to say the Treasury is empty. The people expect that those who offer themselves for office know these things before they get there. So, they will want answers. The PM and the Minister of Finance will have to have the courage to take the country into their confidence. The population is mature enough to be leveled with and to be trusted with information. We want to know the real state of our economy, and we want to know the solutions that they are bringing to whatever challenges that exist. If it makes sense to the people, the people will themselves become part of the solution.

3) Then, there are also a number of issues regarding Leadership:

a) Strength: The Opposition has already put that on the table by accusing her of weakness and warning about the powerful forces insider her cabinet. And indeed there are some pretty powerful personalities and interests, both inside her cabinet, and outside. What kind of leader will she show herself to be? Well, we already see a tendency towards consensus- which is good. But the effective consensual leader has to have the ability convince people and win support for the difficult and important decisions of the day. Otherwise, consensus could become a case of taking the line of least resistance- which would be the sign of weakness.

b) Diligence: The leader’s job is all-encompassing. She delegates but still has to stay on top of everything- even as she has to be out and about among the people. In this regard, she will require serious professional capabilities around her. Many a leader has fallen prey to the good intentions of sycophants and other supporters with less than professional or discriminating capabilities. A good leader can be tripped up by the painting of false realities inside the echo chamber in which power resides. So more than anything, she has to have her own ability to sift reality, as well a professional team that is willing and able to speak truth to power.

c) Time Management: A people person, as the Prime Minister has already shown herself to be, runs the risk of having to be everything to everybody, everyday. No leader can be effective if they don’t master the art of discipline with flexibility.

d) Good Health: The best intentions of any leader can be derailed by the limitations of their physical condition. Adequate rest, a good diet, effective avenues for stress relief, a harmonious family life, good friends…. All these are vital to maintaining an alert mind, a sense of well-being and personal peace- all critical in order to deliver at one’s best.

A key point that the entire administration needs to note, is that government is a going and projects are reviewed, the business of government must continue. Stasis is dangerous- not just to the national economy but to national self-confidence.

Reginald Dumas

The most stunning statistic to emerge from the recent meeting of the world’s richest nations at the G-20 Summit in Toronto came from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. According to him, less than one percent of the more than $5 billion pledged to Haiti has been delivered upon. Of all the nations that pledged aid, only Brazil has kept its promise with its payment of $40 million.

It would seem that in a world of nations distracted by domestic problems of their own, the needs of Haiti are receding into memory while good intentions die the death of the stillborn.

Just over a week ago, on June 22 in London,

REGINALD DUMAS, one of the Caribbean’s foremost advocates of the Haitian cause, tackled the issue of aid to Haiti in a paper  presented at an International Conference titled “From Duvalier to Preval: Haiti Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow” at the Institute of the Americas, University of London.  In the following excerpt, Mr Dumas discusses the aid measures that have actually emerged from the flurry of meetings and conferences on Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake of January 12.

IBRD

The World Bank announced on March 31 that it was making USD479 million available to Haiti through June 2011. USD250 million of this would be new funding which itself would include USD151 million in grants, a USD39 million write-off of Haiti’s remaining debt to the Bank, and  USD60 million in investments from the Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC).  Where the debt write-off is concerned, you must not assume that the Bank was simply giving up USD39 million.  Rather, it was that 14 donor countries had pledged to provide that sum to the Bank to facilitate the cancellation.

A mechanism being considered by the Bank for Haiti is the use of the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme (CCT), under which poor families receive a basic income in exchange for a commitment to keep their children in school and take them for regular medical check-ups.

IMF

For its part, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced on January 27 that it had, under its Extended Credit Facility (ECF), approved an augmentation of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) 65.5 million (about USD102 million), and that USD114 million would be disbursed within a few days.  The augmentation, the Fund said, would provide “urgently needed cash resources to the government, which (would) allow the authorities to acquire emergency imports without depleting Haiti’s reserves.”  This assistance would be interest-free, and repayments of principal would be done only after a grace period of 5½ years.

On March 31 in New York, the Fund’s Managing Director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, spoke of the need for budget support, careful monitoring of monies, the involvement of the private sector, and   debt relief. He also stressed the need for the Haitian authorities “to be in the driver’s seat.”

IDB

The IDB said it would forgive all of Haiti’s debt, for a total relief package of USD479 million.  (Strangely, the figure is the same as that of the World Bank.)  It would set up a new Haiti Department within the Bank, and it would also transfer up to USD200 million annually of its Ordinary Capital income to the Haiti Grant Facility through the year 2020.

Further, it would convert into grants an undisbursed balance of USD186 million from existing loans to Haiti.  In addition, its Multilateral Investment Fund, or FOMIN, would set up a support facility, called the Haitian Emergency Liquidity Programme (HELP), to provide grants and capital to qualified and approved Haitian micro-finance institutions.  And earlier this month it said it would make USD200 million in grants over five years to strengthen land tenure rights, boost agricultural production, increase market access for farmers and reinforce food security.

IFAD

In April the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), to which Haiti owes USD50.7million, approved a debt-relief package for the country.  The intention is that IFAD will contribute up to 30 per cent of the debt relief requirement, with member states being responsible for the remaining 70 per cent.

EU

Having met with CARIFORUM in Jamaica on March 23 - CARIFORUM is CARICOM plus the Dominican Republic - the European Union (EU) pledged €1.235 billion (or USD1.6 billion) at the March 31 meeting in New York.  This sum was additional to the €295 million in humanitarian aid and to the €650 million contributed by citizens across Europe.  The total contribution from Europe was close to USD3 billion.  I might add that the detailed figures from March 31 do not indicate any pledge at all from the United Kingdom.

UNASUR

The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) agreed on February 9 in Quito to provide USD300 million, comprising a USD100 million fund as well as a credit of up to USD200 million from the IDB.  The money would be used in areas such as agriculture, health and education. In addition, assistance was provided separately by Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

OAS

The OAS does not command a great deal of money; its actions lean towards the hortatory and the administrative.  Immediately after the earthquake it called for donations to be channelled through the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF), and it convened a meeting of the OAS Group of Friends of Haiti.  As usual in regional and international meetings, it laid the emphasis on coordination of effort.  Subsequently, it said that it would, in the medium and long terms, concentrate “on governance and institutional strengthening, especially in assistance to the electoral process and the relevant institutions, the registry of citizens…and the cadastral system.”

ALBA

ALBA pledged USD 2.42 billion over six years.  Most of that money is expected to come from Venezuela.

CDB

The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) provided USD200,000 in emergency aid through the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) and will be providing USD770,000 to purchase refurbished containers for some government office accommodation.  On March 31 it pledged USD36 million In new funds for 2010/11, to be added to reprogrammed funds of slightly more than USD14 million for a total of over USD50 million.

CARICOM

At the first CARICOM-Mexico summit held in Mexico on February 21,

the two sides agreed to work together in Haiti’s interest.  Trinidad and Tobago pledged USD5 million, Barbados USD1 million.  CARICOM had, the month before, set up a Haiti Unit within the CARICOM Secretariat and had been providing emergency assistance within 24 hours of the earthquake: search-and-rescue as well as escort and convoy operations, medical and surgical help, etc.

Particular tribute should be paid to Jamaica, whose Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, went into Haiti at once with medical and army personnel, and which, despite its difficult financial situation, bore the brunt of the expenses of that intervention.  Tribute must also be paid to Barbados and Guyana, which on a per capita basis contributed in money far more than their fair share of CARICOM help.

In mid-March the University of the West Indies announced that it would be offering places to Haitian students as part of the efforts to assist the tertiary education sector in Haiti.  This project is in the process of elaboration.

Unfortunately, the health assistance that was being provided by CARICOM ended rather abruptly.  At a meeting of CARICOM Heads of Government in March in Dominica, a decision was taken, at the request of President René Préval, that the funds pledged for the third phase of the organisation’s health sector intervention would be contributed directly to the Haitian government as budget support.  Within days, the 200-strong CARICOM presence, centred on Léogane, west of Port-au-Prince, vanished. It has not been replaced.

China

Assistance to Haiti did not, of course, come only from regional and international bodies.  One of the first countries on the ground after the earthquake was China, which within 24 hours had sent search-and-rescue and medical teams.  The effort has not been sustained, however - at the New York conference on March 31 China pledged less than USD1.5 million for fiscal years 2010 and 2011.

Canada

By contrast, Canada, of whose aid Haiti has for years been the largest beneficiary in the Western Hemisphere, immediately provided up to Can$5 million for urgent humanitarian assistance, sent ships with medical supplies and equipment as well as planes with food and water, co-funded a Red Cross field hospital, supported Canadian NGOs and gave Can$60 million to UN agencies such as the World Food Programme and UNICEF.  All that happened within one week of the earthquake. Subsequently, the Canadian government matched more than Can$220 million in donations from the Canadian people.  On March 31 the government announced Can$400 million for humanitarian and reconstruction programmes. Part of that amount will come from the matched donations.

US

By mid-May, the American public had donated USD1.3 billion in disaster assistance.  The US government had already provided funds to UN agencies and to the Pan American Health Organisation, and had sent its military into Haiti - at one point, there were, according to the Pentagon, about 22,000 troops in the country.  It would be fair to add that there was also a hospital ship called the Comfort.

Also, material for shelter was being provided, as well as communications support and mobile light towers. A Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund was established, and in March President Barack Obama promised President Préval that the USA would remain committed to helping Haiti.

For its part, the US Congress fairly exploded into legislative action.  Among others, there were the Haiti Action Initiative and Tax Incentive (HAITI) Act; the Haiti Private Sector Encouragement Act; the Haiti Debt Relief and Earthquake Recovery Act; the Haiti Empowerment, Assistance and Rebuilding (HEAR) Act; the Haiti Economic Lift Program (HELP) Act; and the Help Haitian Adoptees Immediately to Integrate Act (another “Haiti” Act).  It has been a virtual orgy of innovative acronyms, happily inspired, in this case, by chaste desires of profound goodwill.

Outside the Congress, a US Air Force Sergeant has been included by Time magazine on its 2010 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The Sergeant seems to have received this accolade because of his efforts to manage the flow of aircraft traffic at Port-au-Prince airport, a process which has been confidently described by the US Air Force National Media Outreach Office as “the largest single-runway operation in history”.

France

Despite her traditionally uneasy relationship with Haiti, France responded promptly to the disaster - search-and-rescue team, military and fire service personnel, a field hospital etc.  Funding was also made available.  On February 17 President Nicolas Sarkozy, the first French Head of State to visit independent Haiti, announced an aid package of €326 million (USD447 million), which included debt cancellation and new monies.

Venezuela

Venezuela has provided food, electrical generators, water purification systems, tents, gasoline, etc.  She has also written off Haiti’s debt to her - over USD350 million - and, as indicated above, has participated in assistance from ALBA.  On March 31 Venezuela pledged a total of USD2.41 billion, far more than the EU.

Brazil

Within a week of the earthquake, Brazil had pledged USD15 million for humanitarian assistance, contributed to the WFP and the UN Population Fund, dispatched food and personnel, etc.

Later, it co-funded with the USA a soil preparation project (each country contributed USD250,000).

On May 11 Brazil became the first country to make a deposit - USD55 million - to the Haiti Reconstruction Fund agreed to on March 31 in New York.

Cuba

The role of Cuba in Haiti has not been given the attention it deserves.  Its healthcare assistance over the years has been understated but nonetheless crucial: in the period 1998 to 2007, Cuban medical personnel worked in nearly all municipalities offering free healthcare.

Over 550 Haitian doctors have been trained by Cuba; nearly 600 are currently in training.

In New York on March 31 following the signature on March 27 of a Cuba-Haiti Memorandum of Understanding, Cuba announced an ambitious programme to rebuild Haiti’s entire national health service through the establishment of primary, secondary- and tertiary-level clinics and hospitals, provision of over 300 additional medical scholarships, etc.

The estimated annual cost is USD170 million.

By SANKA PRICE

Kamla Persad-Bissessar

ON THE face of it, there seems no connection between the ascent of Kamla Persad-Bissessar as Trinidad and Tobago’s first female prime minister, and the Christopher “Dudus” Coke affair in Jamaica, together with the sad illness of Prime Minister David Thompson in Barbados.

But there is a connection. And it is that the political challenges triggered by the Dudus affair and Thompson’s illness could lead to changes in governments in Jamaica and Barbados within the next three years that could usher in two more female prime ministers.

If that occurs, the English-speaking Caribbean would set the record for the most female leaders of governments in a single geopolitical region at the same time.

What, you may ask, is the basis for making such a bold assertion?

Simply put, unless the political environment undergoes a dramatic transformation between now and then, Jamaica’s next election will be Portia Simpson-Miller’s to lose. In the wake of the Dudus affair, Prime Minister Bruce Golding and his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) now face an enormous uphill battle in regaining the credibility and public trust needed to win another term in office. So a woman could soon be back in the Prime Minister’s office in Jamaica.

In the case of Barbados, Thompson’s illness is taking a toll on the fortunes of the ruling Democratic Labour Party (DLP). To date, the Barbadian public has been provided with very little information about their Prime Minister’s condition. How ill is he? How long will he need treatment? How will his treatment affect his ability to function as prime minister? These are all questions in search of answers.

David Thompson

The potential impact of Thompson’s condition on his party’s political health and fortunes over the next 36 months is not easy to gauge. Sometimes the personal challenges of a leader trigger a wave of public sympathy, sometimes they trigger a loss of public confidence.  Whichever way the public’s response blows for Thompson and his party, one thing is certain: there is political opportunity here for Mia Mottley and the Opposition BLP who might fancy their chances of returning to office under the leadership of Barbados’ first female prime minister.

The evolving gender dynamics is just one element of the general transformation now taking place across the political landscape of the Caribbean. A key aspect of the change involves the electorate itself. Compared to previous generations, today’s electorate is better educated, more widely-travelled, and able to enjoy far greater access to a broad range of information.

The era of paternalistic politics ushered in after independence is now giving way to the management brand of politics. Old ‘til I dead’ loyalties are being replaced by demands for effective leadership  and good governance. Across the region, political parties are coming more and more to look like each other with very little to set them apart, ideologically.

This leveling-out of the ideological field allows the electorate to move easily from one party to the next. Freed from the bonds of ideology, people are increasingly willing to vote- or abstain- according to their conscience rather than to maintain traditional or familial party support.

All of these elements and more were at work in the victory by Persad-Bissessar. Her triumph was more than a vote against the real and perceived excesses and arrogance of the Patrick Manning administration. It was a cry from Trinbagonians for better management of the nation’s resources on behalf of the wider population.

And though Persad-Bissessar’s victory was a statistical triumph in the making - based on the 2007 general election results when her United National Congress (UNC) and Dr Winston Dookeran’s Congress of the People (COP) attracted more voters combined than the then victorious Peoples’ National Movement (PNM) - the fact that her five-party People’s Partnership did not erode the solid PNM base suggests that many of the latter’s sympathisers abstained from voting.

Portia Simpson-Miller

Though the PP did well in garnering 59.81 per cent of the electorate as compared to the PNM’s 39.5 per cent, analysis of the voting patterns suggests the existence of a swing vote that is capable of keeping every government on its toes and the hopes of every opposition alive.

This question of leadership and the need for the public to be able to trust their leaders will be major factors working against Golding in Jamaica whenever the election bell is rung there.

Golding came to power on a reform platform. People wanted change that they could believe in and he pledged to give them that. He promised to be different, to break the link between criminality and politics, as well as to effectively disassemble the garrison communities.

The Jamaica Prime Minister was therefore seen by many as the problem-solver so sorely needed by their beleaguered country, crippled with severe social and economic challenges and high criminality.

The ‘Dudus’ episode has severely undermined his image as a man who could tackle Jamaica’s big problems.

Because of this factor alone, it will be difficult for the JLP to avoid becoming a one-term government. The likelihood of such a result will be further increased by the lack of tangible improvement in the lives of the average Jamaican during the party’s tenure, as the effects of the global recession continue to bite.

Leadership will also be a decisive factor in the next poll in Barbados, but for totally different reasons. When Barbadians wonder whether their Prime Minister is strong enough for the job, they’re thinking about his health. In his most recent cameo appearance at the launch of a major housing project in the north of the country, it was evident that he had lost considerable weight.

The reality for the ruling DLP is that Thompson remains their best asset for re-election as the person with the “best package of qualities” expected in a leader. He commands respect among friends and foes for his intellect and political savvy; for investors he presents a level-headed approach to doing business; his family life is exemplary; there is no hint of corruption surrounding him; and he is well liked by many Barbadians.

Mia Mottley

With no easily discernible alternative to Thompson in the DLP’s frontline, the ruling party will have a task on its hands convincing  the electorate if his health does not permit full participation in the next general election.

So, within three years, when general elections are constitutionally due in Jamaica and Barbados, it is not beyond the realm of possibility for two more women to ascend to the highest political offices in their respective lands. In fact, one might even say they are odds-on favourites to win.

By MICHAEL HARRIS

The people have spoken. In numbers which left no room for doubt they came out on Election Day and demonstrated their utter rejection of Mr. Manning and all his works. In so doing they swept the People’s Partnership into office with a commanding majority of seats (29-12).
The euphoria which swept throughout the country that night as the results of the election became clear, was fuelled both by the joy at the victory itself and by a sense of enormous relief that the country had been able to free itself from the yoke imposed upon it by Mr. Manning. It was entirely appropriate and deserved.
But that euphoria will not last forever. And, as Mr. Dookeran suggested during the campaign, the honeymoon period which will be given to the new government by the people is likely to be short indeed and, before long, many of the very people who wined the night away in jubilation two Mondays ago are going to be demanding action and solutions from the new government to the myriad problems which exist. The question, therefore, is how shall the new government fare?
In this context the first issue which has to be addressed is the fact that the People’s Partnership is an avowedly coalition party. During the campaign there were many dire predictions emanating from the PNM’s platform that coalition parties are inherently unstable and do not last. The PNM made much play with the example of the NAR, the coalition party which won office in 1986 and which fractured into two warring camps in its first year in office.
 The PNM’s campaign mantra that coalition parties are inherently unstable was a gross exaggeration but the kernel of truth contained within it needs to be explored. As I had written a few months ago “a true coalition party is always an amalgam of different and competing interests which give to such a party its essential cast and definition. Coalition parties are always idiosyncratic constructs.”  So coalition parties come in many different shapes and structures and the stability or fragility of any such party has to be assessed in terms of its particular structure in the context of the environment in which it has to operate.
The structure of a coalition party is assessed, in the first place, in terms of the relative interests and strengths of its constituent elements. Any assessment of the People’s Partnership therefore would have to begin by acknowledging that while it is clearly a coalition it is not truly a coalition of parties. Of the five constituent elements certainly two of them can hardly be described as political parties.
The Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) was in the very embryonic stages of its formation when the elections were called and the National Joint Action committee (NJAC), though of long-standing, had been out of the political limelight for many a year and had become a small, though vital interest group espousing a particular and very idiosyncratic ideology. Of the other three elements, the Tobago Organization of the People (TOP) though clearly a political party by any definition of that term, was relatively new and, more importantly, was based exclusively in Tobago and focused its interest and platform almost exclusively on Tobago affairs.
It is only in relation to the other two elements of the People’s Partnership therefore that we could really speak of a coalition of parties. The Congress of the People (COP) and the United National Congress (UNC) were both parties with significant support and with a broad based set of interests. What is important here, however, is the fact that these two parties came to the table with a significant imbalance and an increasing imbalance of political resources.

The UNC had just been reenergized and revitalized under the leadership of Mrs. Kamla Persad-Bissessar following her stunning defeat of party founder and maximum leader, Basdeo Panday. That very same event deprived the COP of at least half of its political base. Without any seats in Parliament, with its support leaking furiously back to the UNC from which it had come, and starved of serious financial resources, that Party came to the table in a far weaker condition than the UNC. Indeed, as was surprisingly admitted by its political leader Winston Dookeran during the campaign, the COP was dying before the elections were called.
If this analysis is accurate then what we really have in the People’s Partnership is not so much a Coalition of Parties as it is a single Party attaching to itself a variety of interests capable of widening its appeal among the population without in any way threatening its own dominance. For purposes of the elections that widening of appeal was tremendously important. It brought to the UNC the goodwill, if not the open support, of most of the labour movement via the MSJ; it brought an appearance of acceptability and security for the Black population via the NJAC; it brought the appearance of a nation-wide appeal via the TOP and it brought from the COP, a critical element of rationality and respectability.
It brought all of these things which contributed to a massively successful election campaign but at relatively little cost (at least in the short term) in terms of potential conflict of interest amongst the constituent elements with regard to the formation and implementation of governmental policies and programs in office. For while the country has not been made privy to the full details of the deals which have been struck amongst the parties certain things are very clear.
The fact is that the interests and concerns of the other elements were very narrow and particular. The MSJ was about protecting the interests of labour, the TOP about the interest as it perceived them, of Tobago, and all NJAC seemed to want was some attention paid to Laventille. None of these issues in the short term conflicted in any way with the interests of the UNC. As for the COP its interests, as far as they were articulated in any precise way, was about ‘good governance’ which cost nothing at all to agree to.
So that, in fact, the UNC had to give up very little in terms of its room to maneuver in government in exchange for the widening of appeal which it achieved in the general election. This assessment is reinforced by certain other aspects of the structure of the coalition. In the first place none of the constituent elements of the People’s Partnership gave up their particular identities unlike what happened with the NAR in 1986. What this means is that the UNC still stands as a distinct entity and would be relatively undisturbed if any of the other elements sought to withdraw their allegiance and go their own way.
 
Second, in the distribution of seats the UNC insisted on and succeeded in ensuring that it had its own people contest all its safe seats and at least half of the marginals. The importance of this is clearly demonstrated by the results of the election. Of the twenty-nine seats won by the People’s Partnership the UNC won twenty-one, the COP won six and the TOP won the two Tobago seats. What this means is that the UNC is capable of forming the government even without the support of the COP and the TOP.
Not even the fact that one of the UNC seats won was in fact contested by Errol Macleod, Leader of the MSJ, changes the situation to any appreciable degree. Indeed Mr. Macleod has been given the portfolio of the Ministry of Labour, thus giving him control over the area of his organisation’s   primary interest and ensuring at the same time that the UNC itself is insulated from any disaffection which the Labour Movement may come to feel in the future.
What all of this means is that the fractures and fissures which inevitably exist in a true coalition of parties are, in the case of the People’s Partnership, much less deep-seated and pronounced than they would be in a more conventional coalition. The point being that even if serious cracks should appear over time these are unlikely to significantly affect the hold on government of the core party, the UNC. So that those who expect, or are hoping, that because it is a coalition the People’s Partnership would  fragment  and collapse in office because of such fragmentation are likely to be sorely disappointed.
Another issue, tangential to the first, which was raised during the campaign, again largely from the PNM’s platform, was the idea that Mrs. Persad-Bissessar was a ‘weak’ leader and that by surrounding herself with strong men from other parties she would not be able to command them and would eventually become the puppet of these competing interests and be pulled in every direction.
Why they would describe Mrs. Persad-Bissessar as a “weak” leader is not clear. It is true that for most of her political career she played the role of faithful supporter to Mr. Basdeo Panday. While this may raise questions as to the type of experience and training she has and of her view of politics, it in no way suggests that she is weak. Indeed the fact that she survived under Mr. Panday for so many years while many of her male colleagues fell by the wayside suggests quite the opposite.
The truth is that we do not know enough of Mrs. Persad-Bissessar to make any judgment at this point as to her leadership qualities. We have not yet seen her sufficiently tested in the crucible of political conflict and confrontation to make a judgment. What we do know is that when the time was ripe she had the fortitude to challenge Mr. Panday and to best him. That she bested him may have been the result of forces which were sweeping the country. But that she challenged him was entirely a demonstration of her own political courage.
In any case to suggest that as Prime Minister, weak or not, she would become the puppet of her coalition partners is to ignore entirely the enormous power placed in the hands of the Prime Minister under our system of Government. It could legitimately be argued that Mr. Manning was at core a weak and insecure man and look at what he became. So let us therefore dismiss this idea that Mrs. Persad-Bissessar is going to become anybody’s puppet.
However, as we have recently seen with the PNM, internal fragmentation and conflict are not the only reasons a government can collapse in office. The PNM as a government could hardly be described as being wracked by internal conflict and factionalism. With the notable exception of Mr. Rowley, every single member of that government was content to toe the line. Yet it collapsed. The PNM collapsed in office because it pursued policies and manifested a style of leadership which over time came to alienate the vast majority of the population.
In terms of the style of leadership it is difficult to even envisage the new Prime Minister, Mrs. Persad-Bissessar, acting in a way that would even begin to approximate the overwhelming arrogance and the utter disdain for the citizens of the country which was exhibited by Mr. Manning. And while there may be instances of individual Ministers in the new administration behaving in inappropriate ways it is unlikely that such a style of behavior would become the prevailing tenor of the new government.

Where the new Government is more likely, sooner or later, to run into trouble is in relation to the actual policies and its capacity to deal effectively with the multitude of problems facing the country. The fact is that the People’s Partnership comes into office on a wave of exceedingly high expectations on the part of the population. These expectations were fuelled, in large measure, by the plethora of populist promises made by the party during its election campaign. But beyond those promises we simply do not know what to expect from the new government.
It is true that the party did produce a Manifesto, which was published less than two weeks before Election Day. This hardly constituted sufficient time for any meaningful discussion of the content of that document within the party itself far less in the country as a whole. In any case, except for the promises of
actions to be taken in the first 120 days, the manifesto contains very little specificity and is little more than a pulling together of a string of high-level generalities very few of which are concrete enough to elicit any view of what constitutes the fundamental philosophy and principles underlying the stated policy proposals.
 But that is not the only problem with the manifesto. The signal failure of that document is the lack of any analysis whatsoever which attempts to describe for the population the current state of the country- beyond a recitation of the problems we face,; an explanation of how we got there and an exposition of what changes would be necessary to address the fundamental issues and why these would be necessary.
So that we have no idea of what the essential cast  and character of this new government shall be, how it views the political evolution of the country, what it considers to be the fundamental issues, or of its mode of analysis and decision-making. We must acknowledge that in the time in which it had to pull itself together to contest the election there was little room for such discussion. But the failure to engage in such discussions and to engage the various party supporters and the population as a whole in such a discussion is a serious flaw which will inevitably test the new government once it begins to tackle the more fundamental of our country’s problems.
As it stands now everybody expects everything from the new government. In the short run, particularly given the failure of the past PNM administration to address even the most basic and simple of problems faced by the population, this new administration can earn itself tremendous amounts of goodwill simply by vigorously tackling and addressing such basic problems.
But sooner rather than later, the new government will be challenged to demonstrate its capacity to deal with the more fundamental problems of the country. And it is then and in the context of such challenges that its stability and cohesion will be tested.
 So that all the indications point to the probability that the People’s Partnership is going to enjoy, for a period of time, a relatively untroubled life in office.  Eventually, however, the fundamental problems faced by the country will loom large, and then the real test of that party’s resilience and capacity for government will begin. Until then let us enjoy the peace.

…In Pursuit of Greater Glory

By GREGORY McGUIRE

Former prime minister Patrick Manning

Poor Judgment, Bad Decision, Incapable.
It is indeed ironic that words meant for Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bisessar during the elections campaign now seem to have been tailor-made for the former prime minister Patrick Manning. Perhaps it’s not too late for therapy. For surely, with distance from defeat and his feet back on solid ground, Mr Manning is now willing to ask him how could he have got it so wrong.
In 1995 he was chasing the Father of the Nation mantle when he flew off into a different orbit and left Trinidad behind, only to come crashing back to earth after a disastrous premature election. In 2010, his pursuit of Castles in the Sky took him into an altogether different dimension, cutting him off from the people he had sworn to represent.
Back on earth now, the question must be why would Mr Manning even want to continue on as an MP? He has been so wrong; what can he now trust himself to know for a fact?
However one looks at it, Mr Manning had no choice but to accept full responsibility for the PNM’s defeat- although the executive team around him who confused representative politics with corporate politics should all do the honourable thing and go with their leader. Not only was it his personal decision to call an unwarranted election but he ran a campaign all by himself.  Moreover, the general elections of 2010 was essentially a referendum on Mr Manning whose troubles had begun long before the elections were called.  
The figures suggest that enough voters felt strong enough to get off the fence and dip their finger against him. According to the EBC, the PNM garnered 285,000 votes, five per cent less than in 2007 while the groups under the banner of the People’s Partnership increased their stake by some 22 per cent to 416,684 votes, suggesting that, on a whole, the electorate swung towards the People’s Partnership.
So why did people reject Manning? 
The reasons are so many that one would require statistical tools to determine which of the lot was most significant. In summary, however, the  election results speak of a leader who had grown so divorced from the electorate that he was simply unable to gauge the impact of repeated acts of poor judgment, bad decisions and poor leadership. Instead, he convinced himself that he was leading people who were simply not wordly or bright enough to appreciate the brilliance of his vision. In hundreds of ways, he repeatedly declared himself to have some higher intelligence and understanding that in time to come the rest of us would understand.
The acts of poor judgment and bad decisions littered his administration:
• He overlooked the mistakes of Calder Hart and UDeCOTT, not because he necessarily loved either but because they were both critically instrumental to delivering his vaunted legacy of transforming the capital’s architectural landscape in a kind of Shanghaisation of Port of Spain through the new PM’s Residence, NAPA, IFC, Gov’t Campus et al.

• He went to war against T&T’s own construction sector, possibly the most sophisticated and best developed in the English-speaking Caribbean, not because it was incompetent and price-gouging as his government suggested, but because the Chinese financing for his Castles in the Sky required the contracting of  Chinese firms.

• He sacrificed Keith Rowley, not because Rowley was a political threat, but because Rowley’s association with Emile Elias and the construction sector helped arm him with the information to threaten the single-minded pursuit of the legacy project of Castles in the Sky.

• He let crime run away because he listened to  gossip from protected ministers needing to rationalize their under-performance and because of his fascination with eaves-dropping technology that reduced victims to collateral damage as a result of lifestyle choices.

• He lost the trust of the PNM’s own constituency because of sheer disrespect. Steelpan wasn’t good enough; he had to elevate it by sponsoring and promoting the G-Pan; Calypso, Soca and Chutney were just too primitive, he hungered for opera, big band music and ballroom dancing. The preferences led him to denounce the People’s Arts and the People’s Culture, which explains the rush to build NAPA in time for when the world came calling twice last year for the OAS Summit and CHOGM. Across the road, the Carnival Centre lay fallow, the hallowed Grand and North Stands in ruins, the spirits of our Carnival ancestors disturbed and left to roam.  As Peter Ray Blood put it in a post Carnival 2K10 article in the Trinidad Guardian:

“I am inclined to contend that the decision to demolish the 90-year home and Mecca of T&T Carnival seriously hinges on sacrilege and blasphemy, obliterating the spiritual foundation of our national festival, and the premiere showcase for our indigenous creativity and expression.
I implore the Government to place the construction and completion of the performing space at the “Grand Savannah” on the front burner of projects to be completed, if only to put to rest the spirits of our mas shamans, like Wilfred Strasser, George and Alvin Bailey, Harold Saldenah, Elsie Lee Heung, Clifton Bomparte, Harry Basilon, Jack Brathwaite, Cito Velsasquez, Jason Griffith, Horace Lovelace, Irving Mc Williams and Gene Miles. In short, please give the people back their stage in the Savannah, and the North and Grand Stands too.”
The disrespect was compounded on the campaign trail by his attack on Makandal Daaga, a living legend of the 1970 Black Power Movement. His dismissive attitude to Daaga merely underscored his ignorance of T&T’s history and his own alienation from the PNM constituency whose leader, Eric Williams, had famously said in 1970:  
“The fundamental feature of the demonstrations was the insistence on black dignity, the manifestation of black consciousness and the demand for black  economic power. The entire population must understand that these are perfectly  legitimate and are entirely in the interest of the community as a whole… If that is Black Power, then I’m all for Black Power.” (Eric Williams Address to the Nation, March 23rd 1970).
• He saddled the country with MPs who represented nobody but himself because the greater glory required not people’s representatives, but hand-maidens to the Master. In the process, the very concept of representative government was corrupted with members of parliament describing themselves as executives of a CEO Prime Minister! No wonder Kamla Persad-Bissessar is advising her team to frame the words “Servants of the People” and have them put on every desk in the Public Service. Perhaps she understands that the most powerful outcome from this election is the electorate’s growing confidence in flexing its power against parties and politicians who fail to deliver on the core responsibility of serving the people.
• He placed a higher premium on prestige over people. “Let them eat concrete” seemed to be the response the people’s demand for basic health care, water and security.

The question is: How did Manning get so far off the track?
For one thing, what was there to stop him? Certainly not a party capable of reining him in.
Like the UNC until very, very recent times (last six months or so), the PNM is designed to serve the leader, not the other way around. With due respect to Ferdie Ferreira, the party that put its tails between its legs while Manning ran amok is precisely the party that Eric Williams built. Williams as an intellectual and politician might command more respect than Manning, but the PNM today is the consequence of a leader who was prepared to say ‘Come when I say cometh and go when I say goeth”, and who systematically silenced the internal voices of opposition and replaced them with millstones.
As the PNM faces the future, it can take heart from the fact that the ground for reform and rejuvenation is always more fertile outside of Whitehall than inside. If Panday was still in office, the UNC would never have risked changing its leader.
Every democracy needs a vibrant Opposition. For the PNM, the question is whether the party can resist the old habit of closing ranks around the leader and choose, instead, to open up new wellsprings of possibility for self-transformation for the politics of the 21st century.
It would be great if it could do so; but nothing in its history would suggest such capabilities.  
For one thing, will the PNM ever be brave enough to go for one member-one vote in its leadership election? Can the elders who fawned before Manning, find the courage to promote an open leadership race and encourage the best to step forward in a contest designed to promote competence and talent?
Not likely. Review the PNM’s comment on coalition politics and you’ll see that this is a party that confuses rivalry with instability and competition with division. Perhaps it comes from having been in office so long, but for the PNM, the veneer of party stability is more important than party democracy. And if this is the case, then the best it can hope for is the collapse of the People’s Partnership’s coalition government.