Tony Fras­er

?See­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pro­vok­ing holy con­ster­na­tion in the minds of Catholics about al­leged des­e­cra­tion, and trig­ger­ing fears with­in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of what he con­sid­ers the tox­i­c­i­ty of the UNC/COP-led coali­tion, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM latched on to the strat­e­gy of de­mon­is­ing Makan­dal Daa­ga and Er­rol Mc Leod, mak­ing them, and the in­ter­ests they rep­re­sent, un­fit to be in a par­ty seek­ing to gov­ern the coun­try.

By ex­ten­sion, what Man­ning did was to seek to un­der­mine the black na­tion­al con­scious­ness move­ment of the 1970s and the his­toric and fun­da­men­tal con­tri­bu­tion of the labour move­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T go­ing back to Cipri­ani in 1919 and But­ler in 1937. For the his­tor­i­cal record, Cap­tain Cipri­ani placed the "bare­foot man" on stage as some­one who could not be ig­nored. The Bible-tot­ing, fire-breath­ing Tubal Uri­ah "Buzz" But­ler as­sert­ed that the work­ing man/woman had rights, in­clud­ing the right to be a dig­ni­fied hu­man be­ing to be paid a liv­ing wage. In that era of op­pres­sive colo­nial rule, But­ler and his army es­tab­lished that if the work­ing man was not com­pen­sat­ed ad­e­quate­ly for his labour, then there would be no prof­its. In the in­stance of NJAC and Daa­ga, the move­ment of the 1970s sought to take so­cial, cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic lib­er­a­tion fur­ther along a con­tin­u­um af­ter po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence in the neo-colo­nial era had failed to trans­form the so­ci­ety and econ­o­my. The ac­tion of then Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams to in­sti­tute more than a few of the ob­jec­tives of the 1970 quest­ing for so­cial jus­tice and eco­nom­ic in­de­pen­dence was en­dorse­ment of the in­her­ent right­ness of the cause pur­sued by Daa­ga, the oth­er lead­ers and the so­cial un­der­class amongst the black and In­di­an pop­u­la­tion.

At the same time he was seek­ing to en­gen­der fear of labour and to un­der­mine the na­tion­al con­scious­ness move­ment that sought trans­for­ma­tion­al change out of slav­ery, in­den­ture­ship and colo­nial dom­i­na­tion, Man­ning felt it le­git­i­mate to open­ly con­sort with el­e­ments of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. More­over, it must be not­ed that suc­ces­sive Man­ning gov­ern­ments have had rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty hold­ing down min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tions. Why should labour be with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion? Man­ning's urg­ing against labour in a UNC coali­tion is even more in­sen­si­ble as that par­ty was found­ed on the base of the sug­ar work­ers union go­ing back to Adri­an Co­la Rien­zi. This col­umn has con­stant­ly ar­gued about the cheap­ness, pueril­i­ty and dis­hon­esty of lo­cal poli- tics. Man­ning's at­tempt to dis­tort the 1970 rev­o­lu­tion and the growth of con­scious­ness is one of the most vul­gar, dan­ger­ous and des­per­ate acts of elec­tion­eer­ing yet ex­pe­ri­enced in 2010.

So des­per­ate has he been to mar­gin­alise Mc Leod and Daa­ga, hop­ing to pre­vent sec­tions of the vot­ing com­mu­ni­ty from grav­i­tat­ing to a coali­tion of in­ter­ests in the so­ci­ety and poli­ty, that he does not see the in­con­gruity of cham­pi­oning the cause of Cepep work­ers liv­ing on the mar­gins while den­i­grat­ing the his­tor­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion of labour. But there are those who would ar­gue that there is re­al­ly no con­tra­dic­tion be­tween Man­ning seek­ing to de­ny work­ers and the so­cial un­der­class a place at the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble while cul­ti­vat­ing Cepep. The ar­gu­ment would be that the pro­gramme in its present con­di­tion amounts to no more than en­gag­ing a cap­tive elec­toral force and cam­paign­ing mus­cle for the rul­ing par­ty. In the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal cul­ture, the quest for pow­er is com­pet­i­tive and des­per­ate. Par­ties and po­lit­i­cal lead­ers do any­thing to get in­to of­fice; Pan­day was hon­est: "pol­i­tics has its own moral­i­ty," which amounts to none. The ab­sur­di­ty of Man­ning's de­mand for Daa­ga to do penance be­fore the Catholic com­mu­ni­ty was ex­posed by se­nior cler­ic of the church, Mon­sign­or Chris­t­ian Pereira. Daa­ga and NJAC did not des­e­crate the cathe­dral and so have noth­ing to apol­o­gise for, said Pere­ria.

The priest went fur­ther to note that Arch­bish­op Pan­tin was a se­nior mem­ber of NJAC's ap­point­ed race re­la­tions com­mit­tee. More­over, that Fr Jer­ry Pan­tin re­spond­ed to the 1970 call for "bread and jus­tice" by es­tab­lish­ing the Ser­vol com­mu­ni­ty that has giv­en prac­ti­cal skills to thou­sands of his­tor­i­cal­ly de­spised and de­prived peo­ple of Laven­tille and else­where. But Man­ning's in­ter­ven­tion al­so sends the sig­nal that or­di­nary work­ers and the so­cial un­der­class can­not be trust­ed to hold state pow­er. Is it that these so­cial, eco­nom­ic and eth­nic class­es should be de­nied the right to gov­er­nance? Is gov­er­nance the pre­rog­a­tive of a pro­fes­sion­al elite work­ing in con­junc­tion with cap­i­tal? Ques­tion is: has that mode of gov­er­nance been pre­or­dained by God or na­ture, log­ic, sci­ence and fair­ness?

The state of the world, the greedy ex­ploita­tion of hu­man and phys­i­cal re­sources to the point where the con­se­quences of such greed are threat­en­ing our ex­is­tence in a va­ri­ety of ways, cli­mate change be­ing one of them; the vi­o­lence and ha­tred spread abroad; the ab­ject pover­ty lived in by the vast ma­jor­i­ty of hu­man kind are the re­sults of elite gov­er­nance, not labour and groups seek­ing so­cial jus­tice. The po­lit­i­cal or­der of the west­ern world has it that Great Britain and the USA are the flag­ships of democ­ra­cy. Those who rail against the par­tic­i­pa­tion of all the so­cial groups in so­ci­ety in the busi­ness of gov­ern­ment must no­tice that coali­tions are the or­der of the day in those poli­ties. In the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary po­lit­i­cal change of the 21st cen­tu­ry, the ma­jor­i­ty of vot­ers in the en­trenched white, tra­di­tion­al­ly racist po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of the US recog­nised the need to make al­liances with blacks, with labour, with His­pan­ics, with gen­der con­stituen­cies while main­tain­ing links with cap­i­tal, the church and oth­er tra­di­tion­al groups. It can­not be dif­fer­ent.

A cou­ple months ago this col­umn fea­tured a se­ries on the dys­func­tion­al and di­vi­sive na­ture of par­ty pol­i­tics. Man­ning's at­tempt to so dis­tort his­to­ry and de­ny such a fun­da­men­tal so­cial group of work­ers are in­di­ca­tors of the dys­func­tion. Every PNM can­di­date has achieved pro­fes­sion­al train­ing and high-salaried jobs in­side and out­side of gov­ern­ment be­cause of the ef­forts of or­gan­ised labour and the 1970 rev­o­lu­tion to trans­form the na­ture of colo­nial so­ci­ety and priv­i­lege. His­to­ry will as­sign them equal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for be­ing part of this gross and un­for­giv­able den­i­gra­tion and de­nial. But per­haps back of the mind of Man­ning is the dead­ly fear, first ex­pressed by Dr Williams, of al­low­ing sug­ar and oil to come to­geth­er.