Trinbagonians have a messiah complex. It is a pretty obvious symbol throughout our society. We celebrate numerous Roman Catholic holidays here that all hark back to the birth, death and blood and body of Christ. Even when the holiday isn't Christian, but from another religious sect like Carnival, Holi or Divali there is still the presence of the scapegoat, that thing being sacrificed for the good of the larger whole.
Patrick Manning probably wasn't aware of it, but he offered himself up as this both year's political messianic scapegoat. The last two and a half years (if not all 7) of his political reign was filled with discontent: smelters, property taxes, inefficient ministers, escalating crime, expensive summits, useless and expensive buildings, corrupt businessmen running amok with the country's money, shrinking oil and gas reserves, an overburdened treasury. The list really can go on. The people were angry. Upset. The land needed to be purged.
But even with this dire need for purging, 2 1/2 years ago when given the opportunity to remove Manning, the people hesitated because the society is complex, complicated in its attitudes and still very much in the embryonic stages when it comes to political education and self-empowerment. The old Bogies of race, ethnicity and, most importantly, economic patrimony reared their heads and whispered into the minds of many of the PNM doubtfuls.
Most PNM supporters and many people who are non-Indian in Trinidad and Tobago find it difficult to vote for the UNC party. It is a party associated with an Indo-Trinbagonian ethnic base as its support. Indians, whether true or not, are associated with white collar crime and corruption. The Indo-TrinB is seen as greedy and grasping, capable of great cunning and underhanded deeds and not to be trusted around money. When the UNC came into power between 1995-2000, their actions, from the public's perspective seemed to confirm these stereotypes. By 2001 the majority of the country's electorate ensured that the UNC could not be in power. In 2007 the spectre of that 5-year feeding frenzy still lingered and during that election they lost part of their voter-base to the COP.
The COP emerged in 2007 as an alternative party. Alternative to what, the people asked? To tribal politics, they responded. It seemed then that what they offered was class-based politics instead of ethnic-based politics. They were a party of ideas, they said, embracing all groups. What the PNM and UNC voter bases saw was a party of middle class people who fraid to get their hands dirty in anything real and meaningful. Despite the many marches and protests that they organised, they were not totally embraced. The UNC supporters who went over to them were scoffed at: they were the knife-and-fork-indians, the ones too uppity to sanay with their hands and eat on sohari leaf. The brown/mulatto middle class was their main voter base. Them kind of people aint know bout John John and Beetham and Sea Lots. If they have to pass there they wind up their windows and pretend it don't exist. So in the 2007 elections, despite purporting itself as the party to save Trinbago from race politics, the COP's message fell on hard ground mostly, it only took root in the hearts of a few.
They didn't win a seat, but they certainly unseated Panday who lost his cool at Rienzi complext 2 1/2 years ago and blasted his support base. It was the beginning of yet another end to Panday. The party was properly well fed up of him. Jack Warner was already in the party and an elected MP. Jack had made a promise. He was going to rid the party of all of the filth. He had a very public To-Do list. Between 2007 and 2010 Warner waged an internal war within the upper ranks of the UNC that got rid of the old guard that many felt was stifling growth in the party. Ironically enough Warner's corrupt dealings as a FIFA official were largely ignored by his supporters and Warner himself seemed to become a sort of deliverer. The Simon Bolivar of the UNC as it were. Canny as ever, Warner knew that it would be hard for the core UNC support-base to see an African face as its leader, so he openly supported Kamla Persad-Bissessar. Warner ran for party chairman and Bissessar for political leader. The campaign was strategic, fashioned only slightly after Obama's campaign. No smearing, no bad talking on her part, while Panday ranted and raved like a lunatic, calling names and casting aspersions. On January 24th 2010, the UNC support base vomited all over their former Hindu Messiah, made him their scapegoat and elected a Hindu Messiahess (Judaism doesn't really allow for a female version of this word forgive me). Kamla became the Deliverer. She promised to deliver the country out from under Manning's rule (Let her people goooooooo). Warner, strategically positioned with the cue cards in the wings assured people that he would help Kamla to realise her true potential as Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, thinking it would be another 2 1/2 years for her to prepare. Within 8 weeks Kamla's UNC would have to quilt together an Alliance between several interest groups.
On the night of January 24th I said to many, now let's see if the PNM will get rid of its albatross aka the PM, the Project Manager, Patos, Patrick Manning. Despite knowing that at least half of the country was baying for his blood, or at least his removal from office, Manning remained as leader. After announcing elections in April, Manning again fashioned himself as political deliverer. He raised many valid concerns on his hustings, and then shaped those concerns into fears and jumbies. So between the announcement of the election date and the election itself many of Manning's former supporters went from hating Manning to seeing Manning as their only form of deliverance from the thieving Alliance. Manning ensured that while he never used the word Indian on his platform "them" and "they" were used often enough to distinguish his support base from another support base and since his support base is largely (but not wholly) African-descended, the differencing was very much implied. They will take all the money, they will take away your programs. Where all yuh will find (CEPEP) work to do and (HYPE, MUST) programmes for all yuh children? Doh forget GATE, we give all yuh GATE, they will close the GATE to all yuh and open the GATE for them children alone.
Manning played on the economic insecurities of his support base. It is a well-known fact that economic power does not reside in the hands of the Afro-TrinBs. The businessmen in this country tend to be descendants of Syrian/Lebanese, Chinese, European and East Indian peoples. Afro-Trinbagonians have tended to get work in the public service and various government ministries. Their salaries come from the state. Manning knows fully well that the programes he named (with the exception of GATE) caters to a largely Afro-Trinbagonian audience. Afro-Trinbagonians have developed a welfare attitude under the PNM government (from Williams' time come down). They are always interested in what the government can give them, as opposed to how they can do for themselves, or how they can use what the government gives them to do better for themselves. There are whole generations of families within the Afro-Trinbagonian community who survive off CEPEP and MUST and HYPE programmes and don't think it necessary to get up and do better or more for themselves. Manning knows this only too well and spent four weeks playing on those old fears of "the Indian go take away all yuh money!" Which really is laughable, because the money made through CEPEP and other programmes is negligible and not worth stealing. But Afro-Trinbagonians don't make an effort to educate themselves (despite all the free education the PNM has given them). They don't make an effort either to utilise the patrimony given to them by the government to start businesses and become sustainable.
The hue and cry heard this week after the PNM lost power to the UNCOP Alliance was one I heard in 1995. Fear from the Africans, triumph from the Indians. The power the Indo-TrinBs are celebrating is not economic power, they had that long before they got into government. It is political and cultural hegemony - a sense now of being able to assert themselves in a society where they feel marginalised. And they have valid reasons for feeling this way. The moan of pain still coming from the PNM support base is simple to understand: (seeming) political and cultural dominance is all that Afro-TrinBs had going for them. Now, in this era of change, where their political scapegoat/messiah has failed them and been rightly crucified with no hope of resurrection, it remains to be seen if PNMites will take this opportunity and use it properly.
There needs to be a change in the party's structure. Maximum leaders make immovable tyrants, as Manning proved and not even the party stalwarts could get him to step down, so instead they had to organise an underground movement during the elections to vote against him. No party should be held to ransom by its leader in this way....then it is not a party, is a damned one man show! The PNM has to begin to educate its followers about things like economic power, cultural power, social power. This is a pipe dream. They will never do it, because they need their supporters to be as culturally ignorant as possible and as economically dependent in order to be a legitimate choice for them. The minute the majority of the PNM voter base has economic power and cultural knowledge, then all elections will truly be about issues and not race. The same way as soon as Indo-Trinbagonians feel that they are accepted and not ignored and marginalised they too will start looking at the issues as opposed to protecting their identity and (for some) ethnic purity.
The most positive thing that came out of this election for me, was not necessarily the Alliance's win, but the realisation across the board that a new era of politics has come to the country and people are going to have to catch up with it or be left behind. There is also a realisation that the people need to be more actively involved in their goevernance, because it is our passivity that gave us the Manning era.
The COP for all the middle class stigma attached to it has proven to be the one platform that addressed issues from the ground up. Neither the UNC or PNM platforms said much that was concrete and in the last 7 days of campaigning they both resorted to making wild and empty promises to the voting public. There were candid shots of Warner offerering money for votes. Kamla's claims of pension and laptops for all was done to pander to the hand-out mentality of the poorer sections of society and she got their votes, and will no doubt earn their scorn and derision when those promises cannot be fulfilled.
The PNM, possibly under Keith Rowley's leadership, will have to find ways to become a viable option, not to their voter base, but to swing voters and COP supporters who are likely to still be assessing the UNC's credibility even after voting for them.
The time of the lone messiah cum political scapegoat is fast drawing to a close. Partnering is where it is at. We can't let the government dictate to us, we have to dictate to them. And if we screw up, we become our own political scapegoats.
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