Daly Bread: Buying cat in bag—T&T politics remains policy free

Throughout the now concluded last week of campaigning for tomorrow’s general election, the lack of articulation on the campaign platforms of specific plans has persisted, as has the nastiness.

It is not clear how the competing parties will deal with violent crime, drastic revenue shortfall in the economy, foreign exchange distribution injustices and the funding of the arrays of benefits being promised.

Tomorrow therefore, to a large extent, we will be buying cat in bag when we vote. Which bag we buy will be driven by feelings of race, class and batch and, in some cases, anticipation of freeness. These feelings will not be subject to significant moderation by consideration of policy proposals.

It is a pity that making choices on a more rational basis are so severely limited by the decadent nature of our politics. As a consequence, we are in a dysfunctional situation, in which we are making choices without knowing sufficient about the true nature or intentions of the party we are choosing.

Nevertheless, it is important to be pleased that, unlike several other nations, we have kept intact the practice of peacefully choosing our governments by the ballot and accepting the result.

Unfortunately, last week, there surfaced a scent of civil disobedience if the result does not go a certain way. This is very troubling. I mark the spot and move on to examine how the dysfunction that I describe came about.

The two main political parties, the Afro-Trinidadian dominated Peoples National Movement (the PNM) and the Indo-Trinidadian dominated United National Congress (the UNC), have not needed to be accountable or policy creative, because each of the two was guaranteed the steady support of diehard supporters.

For reasons arising out of visceral tribal loyalty and the other influences mentioned above, each die hard group relentlessly throws up smoke screens, personal attacks or mauvais langue designed to blur serious investigation, accountability and consequences for their side when something goes wrong.

The core issue causing the uproar in the national community quickly gets lost and becomes the proverbial nine-day wonder. As popularly expressed, nothing comes of it. Everything ultimately gets covered up.

As indicated, these smoke screens take different forms—but in an openly corrupt society it is easy pickings to say of each other: “you tief too” or “you tief more than we” and cite alleged examples.

The two main political parties that dominate our electoral politics have historically steeped themselves in this tactic and are now perceived to be above a state of equal shame in the minds of the more open-minded voting public.

In fact, as far back as 1986 a former Peoples’ National Movement (PNM) Minister notoriously declared “all ah we tief”.

This unproductive political atmosphere grew and grew, frequently filled with barely concealed expressions of hatred and distrust. Its persisting adverse consequence is that the conduct of politics on an equal shame basis discourages political contestation on the basis of ideas and plans for better governance.

This lack of enlightened political leadership was made more tragic by the continuous indifference of the validating elites towards showing some kind of capacity for critical thinking and for judicious comment, instead of obsequious platitudes.

Fortunately (if that’s the correct term for what some commentators call the curse of oil), we could have lived materially comfortably in a state of equal shame. Because, at the time that the negative political atmosphere was developing, we had for the most part vast revenues from the energy sector flowing into the Treasury.

These juicy revenues were deployed to run something for everybody. Unearned prosperity made life nice for many persons and contributed to the development of a dependency syndrome while the need for genuine socio-economic development was ignored.

Plenty mas’ could be played all year round and we all drank the Kool Aid of “sweet T&T”.

So, we go to the polls tomorrow with a weakened democracy and a country in serious trouble. Many citizens are trapped by the delusions that we are special, that we can carry on “jammin’ still” and no day of reckoning will ever come.

I fear for us all in the coming guava season—whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s election.

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Martin Daly

Martin G Daly SC is a prominent attorney-at-law. He is a former Independent Senator and past president of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago.
He is chairman of the Pat Bishop Foundation and a steelpan music enthusiast.