Tony Fras­er

?Can the hi­er­ar­chy of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, com­pris­ing the Gen­er­al Coun­cil, the Screen­ing Com­mit­tee, and the cab­i­net be con­sid­ered com­plete­ly free of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of al­low­ing Man­ning to pur­sue his im­pe­r­i­al de­signs?

As in­di­cat­ed last week, Man­ning's de­cline and his even­tu­al falling on his sword were en­tire­ly of his own mak­ing, so drunk had he be­come with his suc­cess at dom­i­nat­ing all around him, in­clud­ing the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and poli­ty. How­ev­er, the le­gions of mice of men and women (to ad­just Stein­beck) who sur­round­ed Man­ning in the par­ty, cab­i­net and gov­ern­ment–those hold­ing on be­cause it was the best thing that ever hap­pened to them, those who were pre­pared to tol­er­ate any­thing once they were close enough to glow in the re­flect­ed glo­ry of the em­per­or–fed Man­ning's great ego and gave him a leg-up to the plat­form he even­tu­al­ly as­cend­ed. But Man­ning did not fall out of the sky, a freak of na­ture; he is very much a crea­ture of the par­ty and po­lit­i­cal cul­ture cre­at­ed by Dr Er­ic Williams. Williams de­ter­mined that the PNM would not fol­low the lib­er­al democ­ra­cy mod­el of the USA, open for con­test with­in; but rather it would be a par­ty more like the British par­ties in the West­min­ster sys­tem of tight con­trols on ex­pres­sion of dis­af­fec­tion and con­tention with leader and or­gans of the par­ty.

For decades PNM mem­bers have ex­tolled the virtues of the par­ty be­ing a lodge, a cult in which no one speaks out against de­ci­sions of the oli­garchy, of be­ing an or­gan­i­sa­tion in which the word and ac­tions of the leader are sacro­sanct. It is the same think­ing which fash­ioned the na­tion­al con­sti­tu­tion and the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture, all pred­i­cat­ed on a dom­i­nant "strong­man" and a sub­ject oli­garchy in tow to rule the mass­es. Yes­ter­day it was Man­ning, and frankly it could have been any­one, to­mor­row it could be some­one else. To avoid re­turn­ing to the dic­ta­tor­ship, the pop­u­la­tion will have to force change. His­to­ry has demon­strat­ed that change will not be ini­ti­at­ed by a strong­man wait­ing in the wings or pop­u­lar woman and pop­ulist move­ment now on stage: trans­for­ma­tion and ref­or­ma­tion must be de­lib­er­ate­ly forced in­to ex­is­tence; it will not be ced­ed by those at the cen­tre. When Man­ning start­ed to un­der­mine po­lit­i­cal fig­ures in­side the par­ty, Mitchell, Seep­aul, Maraj, Beck­les, Ed­die Hart, Hinds, Val­ley and Row­ley, no one said a word. They were all quite will­ing to cede the un­chal­lenged lead to the po­lit­i­cal leader as such a supine pos­ture al­lowed them to re­main in the spot­light.

When he used so ob­vi­ous­ly fal­si­fied ra­tio­nale to elim­i­nate se­nior MPs who could pro­vide chal­lenge, self-preser­va­tion was the goal of those who made it through the rain; they kept qui­et. When he en­gaged in reck­less, un­pro­duc­tive and gross­ly in­ef­fi­cient ex­pen­di­ture of bil­lions of dol­lars to achieve his "over-vault­ing am­bi­tions," on­ly Row­ley dared raise an ob­jec­tion in pub­lic. Oth­ers pre­ferred to buy in­to the "wa­jang be­hav­iour" sto­ry. When Man­ning in­def­i­nite­ly post­poned lo­cal elec­tions, they all hid un­der the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­frain that call­ing elec­tions was the pre­rog­a­tive of the Prime Min­is­ter. In­deed, they said it with such rev­er­ence, want­i­ng to please the em­per­or and to se­cure their own po­si­tions. When he forced-out Brigid An­nisette-George on a con­coct­ed sto­ry about her hav­ing in­ter­ests which could ex­pose her, they kept silent. When the Prime Min­is­ter re­fused to re­place a min­is­ter for so-ob­vi­ous con­flict-of-in­ter­est deal­ing, they all stood by and in­deed went in­to bat­tle against the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for ma­lign­ing the min­is­ter and gov­ern­ment. They all stood like lambs bleat­ing in the fields when Man­ning scut­tled a par­lia­men­tary sit­ting to go to Wood­ford Square to in­sti­gate the mass­es against one of their own and the op­po­si­tion in vi­o­la­tion of the sanc­ti­ty of Par­lia­ment.

When Man­ning pa­rad­ed his con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form agen­da to make him­self ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent be­yond the reach of the Par­lia­ment, the law and the elec­torate, their voic­es were raised in unit­ed sup­port for the pro­pos­als. When large seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion ar­tic­u­lat­ed con­cerns about al­leged cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties en­gaged in by Hart and Ude­cott, they all kept qui­et when an up­start min­is­ter had the temer­i­ty to tell the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty how shame it should feel about rais­ing its col­lec­tive voice to pro­tect the na­tion­al pat­ri­mo­ny. But be­yond the in­di­vid­u­als, there must be an ex­am­i­na­tion of the par­ty, its con­sti­tu­tion, the na­tion­al con­sti­tu­tion and the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture to dis­cern how they all con­tributed to the emer­gence of yet an­oth­er Caribbean dic­ta­tor in the mould of Tru­jil­lo and Du­va­lier. Af­ter 54 years of ex­is­tence, 43 of those years in gov­ern­ment, the PNM amounts to no more than an elec­toral ma­chine to put a leader and his oli­garchy in gov­ern­ment. Its in­sti­tu­tions are pa­per thin and open to dom­i­na­tion by a po­lit­i­cal leader who is giv­en to­tal pow­er to do as he pleas­es; ig­nore the emp­ty rhetoric about elab­o­rate process­es of what par­ty groups do right up to the Gen­er­al Coun­cil and con­ven­tion. The re­al­i­ty be­ing that the process­es are com­plete­ly con­trolled by the po­lit­i­cal leader and his oli­garchy. Where is the par­ty news­pa­per start­ed by CLR James? Where is the par­ty school for ed­u­ca­tion and en­light­en­ment? What of a dis­po­si­tion to en­ter­prise and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment–a cred­it union, a co-op­er­a­tive per­haps? Where is the mod­ern par­ty head­quar­ters and phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment on a sub­stan­tial prop­er­ty held for decades?

In­stead, the par­ty ex­ists on the ba­sis of be­ing in gov­ern­ment to dis­trib­ute state re­sources to mem­bers: those who de­pend on so­cial wel­fare, and the so­cial and eco­nom­ic class that gets con­tracts and gov­ern­ment projects. On the eve of de­clar­ing an elec­tion, the par­ty and gov­ern­ment lead­er­ship go cap-in-hand to the Syr­i­an-Lebanese busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty for cam­paign fi­nanc­ing, so in­ef­fec­tive it has been at sus­tain­ing it­self; so dis­posed is it to al­low­ing gov­ern­ment to be cap­tive to groups who are will­ing to pur­chase in­flu­ence. For its 54 years of ex­is­tence, the PNM has not been able to be­come a true na­tion­al move­ment in­clu­sive of the eth­nic, re­li­gious and so­cial class groups of this plur­al so­ci­ety. That is the kind of trans­for­ma­tion away from cen­tralised and dic­ta­to­r­i­al rule to­wards a mod­ern and in­de­pen­dent struc­ture that has to be­come the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of those who would take over the PNM.

There are many lessons here for the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship and its lead­er­ship.