Ken Ali

?It was just 29 months ago that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was fight­ing for her po­lit­i­cal life.

Side­lined by the UNC boys club on the brink of the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar pub­licly protest­ed with her No Woman, No Cry dirge. That re­solve seem­ing­ly sparked a tenac­i­ty and sense of pur­pose she had sub­dued for years, to the point of be­ing teased as Bas­deo Pan­day's ever-loy­al po­lit­i­cal du­lahin. To­day, the self-same Per­sad-Bisses­sar is the prime min­is­te­r­i­al can­di­date in a gen­er­al elec­tion that, frankly, is hers to lose. It is the po­lit­i­cal Cin­derel­la sto­ry of our times. It's the nar­ra­tive of an ig­nored and side­stepped ca­pa­ble as­pi­rant un­done for years by a com­bi­na­tion of her dull sub­servience to a de­clin­ing leader and the heavy-roller im­pact of fierce­ly am­bi­tious drag­ons. It is quite pos­si­bly the ul­ti­mate po­lit­i­cal come­back sto­ry in T&T's his­to­ry–and it's far from fin­ished.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­serves cred­it for the quick-fire po­lit­i­cal union she is now head­ing, in spite of its patch­work and hasti­ly craft­ed out­look. She brought her new­ly-mint­ed stature and ap­peal to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble, al­though I hear Win­ston Dook­er­an was the chief ar­chi­tect of the fi­nal uni­ty prod­uct. Dook­er­an, it was, who in­sist­ed on in­te­gral roles for Makan­dal Daa­ga, Ash­worth Jack and Er­rol McLeod, and this rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal ac­knowl­edg­ment of the nu­ances of this di­verse land. Daa­ga has an his­toric place in post-colo­nial T&T, his abort­ed peo­ple's rev­o­lu­tion hav­ing giv­en flesh and blood to the ear­li­er war cries of na­tion­al­is­tic Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams. Cur­rent so­cial sci­en­tists may well be un­char­i­ta­ble with re­spect to Daa­ga's con­tri­bu­tion to the so­cial and eco­nom­ic mod­erni­sa­tion of our coun­try.�

But Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning was ma­li­cious and of­fen­sive in ques­tion­ing from where the op­po­si­tion fig­ures were able to "dredge him up." The vile re­marks char­ac­teris­es naked and bar­ren pol­i­tick­ing about a vi­tal so­cial move­ment from which Man­ning, no doubt, al­so ben­e­fit­ed. In­deed, the PNM should ide­al­ly now have made its peace with Daa­ga and salut­ed his courage, vi­sion and pur­pose. In 1971, just af­ter he quelled the protests, Dr Williams had re­spond­ed to sev­er­al of its cam­paign de­mands and moved to bol­ster the peo­ple's sec­tor and widen work­ing class par­tic­i­pa­tion. The Ash­worth Jack pact of­fers a fresh start to mean­ing­ful Port-of-Spain-Scar­bor­ough re­la­tions, one which, hope­ful­ly, would re­dound in im­proved de­liv­ery of goods and ser­vices to the sis­ter isle. Im­prove­ment of To­ba­go's in­fra­struc­ture has, re­gret­tably, not pre-empt­ed the need for a lit­tle old la­dy of Caanan to trav­el to Port-of-Spain for a birth cer­tifi­cate. Nor has it ob­vi­at­ed a Bon Ac­cord busi­ness­man hop­ping across to re­solve tax­a­tion or trade is­sues.

That's the re­gret­table as­pect of the Orville Lon­don mod­el of de­vel­op­ment, one which Jack would want to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly im­prove. The ac­cord with Mc Leod and the ap­par­ent non-ag­gres­sion pact with trade unions rep­re­sent an in­trigu­ing po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and mir­rors deep frus­tra­tion over what labour men in­sist is an an­ti-work­er Man­ning agen­da. Ini­tia­tives of the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion have had the ef­fect of unit­ing long-po­larised unions and, with some clever foot­works, some have been wooed–for the time be­ing, at least–in­to the Per­sad-Bisses­sar camp. But she would be painful­ly aware that deals with unions are al­ways dif­fi­cult and brit­tle, es­pe­cial­ly in an un­cer­tain econ­o­my. In all of this, Per­sad-Bisses­sar must be con­scious that to whom much is giv­en po­lit­i­cal­ly, much is ex­pect­ed. Her amal­ga­ma­tion has cer­tain fea­tures of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion ro­man­ti­cism of 1986, al­though it lacks much of the sheen and ide­al­ism. For one, there was in­suf­fi­cient time for the arrange­ment to be prop­er­ly ped­dled. In ad­di­tion, there are some cur­rent front­line play­ers who are both tried and tired, and the plat­form chem­istry is still to be dis­tilled.

She has an ur­gent task of show­cas­ing bright, new pro­fes­sion­als–and now the half-baked, bare­ly-lit­er­ate "youth speak­ers" who open the bat­ting on both PNM and UNC plat­forms. More than that, Per­sad-Bisses­sar must un­rav­el spe­cif­ic poli­cies and pro­grammes to deal with the na­tion­al hum­bugs, those which Man­ning have botched and mis­man­aged. She must, most ur­gent­ly, aban­don the light­weight lin­go of her cam­paign meet­ings, which, ac­cord­ing to some spec­u­la­tors, emerged from the big-bucks Barack Oba­ma can­vassers. For sev­er­al cru­cial rea­sons, the Oba­ma cam­paign was marked­ly dif­fer­ent from Per­sad-Bisses­sar's can­di­da­cy, and so, too, is our po­lit­i­cal fab­ric. "Come, hold my hands" may be ide­al prose for a Sun­day evening chil­dren's par­ty, but not for a new po­lit­i­cal leader with much to prove to a bur­dened na­tion. She has a clear and present re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to out­line spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy pro­pos­als, to put costs to them and to ex­plain how they would im­prove the qual­i­ty of life in a na­tion of vi­o­lence, pover­ty and un­der­de­vel­op­ment. These mea­sures must em­brace all the es­sen­tial na­tion­al trou­ble spots.

Time sure­ly is not on Per­sad-Bisses­sar's side, es­pe­cial­ly as she wages war against Man­ning's reck­less­ly neg­a­tive cam­paign. The Prime Min­is­ter has still not told a be­fud­dled elec­torate why the need to re­turn to the polls at mid-term, nor has he said how gov­er­nance would be im­proved with a fur­ther reshuf­fling of his al­ready de­plet­ed pack of can­di­dates. Staunch par­ti­sans aside, many peo­ple would pre­fer not hear Man­ning's damn­ing re­marks–that some­times bor­der on slan­der–on se­lect­ed po­lit­i­cal foes. T&T is too bad­ly af­flict­ed by so­cial and eco­nom­ic woes to per­mit an in­cum­bent leader to grand­stand with cal­lous plat­form pi­cong. A coun­try dazed by an abrupt elec­tion cam­paign must in­sist on ob­jec­tive and rea­soned analy­ses of the press­ing is­sues.

But the larg­er re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is on the still un­tried Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who must ur­gent­ly and clear­ly tell T&T how she can take us all to our fullest po­ten­tial. In her ini­tial lead­er­ship cam­paign, she must know she is on vir­tu­al na­tion­al po­lit­i­cal tri­al each time she mounts the plat­form, and that she must car­ries the as­pi­ra­tions of her throngs of devo­tees. Yes, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar must step up the tem­po, be­come more fo­cused and spe­cif­ic, and must es­pouse sim­i­lar sin­gle-mind­ed­ness to that which has to­day made her a can­di­date for Prime Min­is­ter. She must, as chut­ney star Dru­patee had ren­dered in a dif­fer­ent set­ting, roll up the tas­sa.

Roll it up, roll it up...