Tony Fras­er

?To trans­form the po­lit­i­cal par­ty cul­ture, which this col­umn over the last five weeks has ar­gued is dys­func­tion­al to the na­tion­al in­ter­est, re­quires a fun­da­men­tal in­ter­ven­tion.

That in­ter­ven­tion must lead to the evo­lu­tion of a con­sci­en­tised po­lit­i­cal cul­ture, with the elec­torate, those who chose to be­long to par­ties and oth­ers who par­tic­i­pate in pol­i­tics out­side of the par­ty frame­work, ex­er­cis­ing a "crit­i­cal con­scious­ness" to shape the con­duct of pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment. Con­sci­en­ti­sa­tion is a con­cept de­vel­oped by Brazil­ian so­ci­ol­o­gist and ed­u­ca­tor Paulo Freire for the op­pressed of his coun­try and the world to free them­selves from op­pres­sion. Freire says to those who are death­ly afraid of a lib­er­at­ed peo­ple re­sult­ing in an­ar­chy when re­moved from un­der the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal con­trol of an "all-know­ing" elite: "On the con­trary, by mak­ing it pos­si­ble for men to en­ter the his­tor­i­cal process as re­spon­si­ble sub­jects, con­sci­en­ti­sa­tion en­rolls them in the search for self af­fir­ma­tion thus avoid­ing fa­nati­cism." As the se­ries has demon­strat­ed, it is fa­nati­cism which at­tends par­ty pol­i­tics and leads sup­port­ers to be­come trans­fixed by a po­lit­i­cal leader, by race, re­li­gion, ge­og­ra­phy and blind­ly leads them in­to sup­port of a par­ty, in ef­fect an oli­garchy. A Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion, de­vel­oped by one man, Prime Min­is­ter Er­ic Williams, a not in­ci- den­tal re­al­i­ty, fa­cil­i­tates such dom­i­na­tion of the par­ty and the gov­ern­ment. Back in the tu­mul­tuous po­lit­i­cal at­mos­phere of Britain in the 17th cen­tu­ry, Eng­lish philoso­pher Thomas Hobbes, con­cerned about "ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment" and the hold­ing of the state to­geth­er with "ab­solute" rulers of one va­ri­ety or the oth­er, ad­vo­cat­ed un­ques­tioned al­le­giance to a sov­er­eign.

One hun­dred years af­ter, the French philoso­pher Rousseau re­ject­ed what was then an ad­vance on the mod­el of Hobbes, rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment, the sys­tem we are strug­gling with to­day. The Re­nais­sance philoso­pher said rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment is a farce: as soon as such a gov­ern­ment is elect­ed those elect­ed be­gin to rep­re­sent them­selves and oth­er spe­cial in­ter­ests–which is what this se­ries on the dys­func­tion­al na­ture of the par­ty has found to be the case here. Rousseau in­stead ad­vo­cat­ed the evo­lu­tion of a so­cial con­tract rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the gen­er­al will of the peo­ple who then had the right to eject a gov­ern­ment the mo­ment the con­tract is bro­ken. In ad­vo­cat­ing that peo­ple place them­selves at the cen­tre and in an as­sertive man­ner to dra­mat­i­cal­ly trans­form, even erad­i­cate, the present dys­func­tion­al un­rep­re­sen­ta­tive par­ty sys­tem, I am sug­gest­ing a re­turn to Rousseau's no­tion of the gen­er­al will com­bined to a vari­a­tion of the Greek city state mod­el of di­rect democ­ra­cy when "every cook" lit­er­al­ly had a chance to gov­ern. It seems cer­tain that on­ly such a form of in­ter­ven­tion to trans­form the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture has a re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty of de­liv­er­ing a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic form of gov­ern­ment which can ef­fec­tive­ly place the pow­er in the hands of a peo­ple. Re­cent­ly I had cause to re­flect on the Black Pow­er rev­o­lu­tion of 1970. In do­ing so I lis­tened to the Mighty Duke chron­i­cling and com­ment­ing on the events sur­round­ing the mass fu­ner­al of Basil Davis, the mar­tyr of the rev­o­lu­tion shot out­side Wood­ford Square by a po­lice of­fi­cer.

I lis­tened in ab­solute as­ton­ish­ment and with fresh ears to lyrics I had heard for all these decades. On the pro­ces­sion to the bur­ial site in San Juan, Duke is him­self cap­ti­vat­ed by the site of tens of thou­sands of peo­ple ex­er­cis­ing their po­lit­i­cal rights. He ex­claims: "Pow­er in the hands of the peo­ple now." We of­ten do not ful­ly ap­pre­ci­ate our bards and their con­tri­bu­tion to our con­scious­ness, but what Duke was see­ing was an in­ter­ven­tion by peo­ple in their own af­fairs, pre­pared as they were to take their des­tiny in­to the own hands. As could be ex­pect­ed, that mo­ment of op­por­tu­ni­ty was tak­en from the peo­ple who want­ed change by a Gov­ern­ment. It de­clared a state of emer­gency and de­ployed the se­cu­ri­ty forces to ex­er­cise "pow­er from the bar­rel of a gun." That at­tempt at rev­o­lu­tion­ary trans­for­ma­tion lost, there has to be a con­scious and sys­tem­at­ic work­ing to­wards turn­ing the par­ty sys­tem on its head. Peo­ple in their own de­lib­er­ate judg­ment must de­ter­mine how best to ef­fect change. Pan­day did say some­thing of fun­da­men­tal im­por­tance in 1988 at the break-up of the NAR: "Peo­ple vot­ed for change, but got ex­change." In­deed, mere­ly chang­ing the po­lit­i­cal par­ty in of­fice with­out in­sti­tut­ing a plan to trans­form the po­lit­i­cal par­ty sys­tem will re­sult in con­tin­ued mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion of the elec­torate and the so­ci­ety. Ex­ist­ing man­age­ment the­o­ries de­signed by the in­tel­lec­tu­al elites can­not help but place peo­ple in po­si­tions sub­or­di­nate to a group of elite man­agers who "know it all." The elites are then sup­posed to ex­er­cise pow­er in a benev­o­lent man­ner in re­la­tion to "the mass­es." The ex­pe­ri­ence every­where has demon­strat­ed that not to be the case.

In ad­di­tion to par­ty mem­bers and the gen­er­al po­lit­i­cal cul­ture im­pact­ing on their par­ties, the peo­ple pow­er be­ing ad­vo­cat­ed must be ap­proached through the trans­for­ma­tion of the na­tion­al Con­sti­tu­tion. Na­tion­al dis­cus­sion and de­bate must lead to the in­sti­tu­tion of peo­ple con­trol over those se­lect­ed to gov­ern. Term lim­its, fixed dates for elec­tions, the pow­er of re­call, in­sti­tu­tion­al struc­tures in which there is a built-in re­quire­ment for par­tic­i­pa­tion by a va­ri­ety of peo­ple in­sti­tu­tions, mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion, a Par­lia­ment con­sti­tut­ed in a man­ner to cir­cum­scribe the pow­er of the Gov­ern­ment are but a few of the re­quire­ments to evolve the peo­ple pow­er be­ing ad­vo­cat­ed. That Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning and then Op­po­si­tion Leader Pan­day have ad­vo­cat­ed a pres­i­den­cy with even greater con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er is in­dica­tive of the in­tent of the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate. Com­ment­ing re­cent­ly on the state of the econ­o­my, renowned econ­o­mist Prof Kari Levitt not­ed the ab­sence of a sound eco­nom­ic struc­ture com­pound­ed by bad eco­nom­ic man­age­ment. But Prof Levitt does not see the prob­lem in eco­nom­ic terms. She says it is a po­lit­i­cal prob­lem.

This col­umn ar­gues that the dys­func­tion­al na­ture of the par­ty sys­tem, built on a con­sti­tu­tion that al­lows for an oli­garchy to man­age the econ­o­my and so­ci­ety un­re­spon­sive to what the rest of the so­ci­ety thinks, is what has to be fixed. Rousseau's gen­er­al will and a sys­tem of di­rect democ­ra­cy must be in­sti­tut­ed. That can on­ly be achieved by peo­ple com­ing on to cen­tre stage to re­assert their pow­er over those who will hold of­fice.