Mar­tin George

The suc­ces­sive back to back de­feats for the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, while it may be seen by some as be­ing a bad thing, in some oth­er ways can be seen as a good thing and a good time for many of its fol­low­ers to try to seek to be eman­ci­pat­ed from the PNM De­pen­den­cy Syn­drome. Com­ment­ing on the lat­est de­feat Mr Colm Im­bert of let­ter writ­ing fame, has said that there is some­thing very, very wrong in the PNM and in­deed how true are his words, on­ly that some­thing has been wrong in the PNM for decades and it may well be that they weren't see­ing it or were turn­ing a blind eye to it, or maybe not even ac­knowl­edg­ing what was re­al­ly the some­thing that was wrong.

I have ex­pressed the view, on many oc­ca­sions and in many dif­fer­ent fo­ra, that in many ways, the PNM, with­in the last cou­ple decades, has been the worst thing for the Afro-Trin­bag­on­ian and that they need­ed, many of them, to be eman­ci­pat­ed from the PNM de­pen­den­cy syn­drome. Of course it is not a view shared by every­one, least of all, the de­pen­dents them­selves, who at times may have seen their dai­ly bread as in­ex­orably tied to a cul­ture of PNM hand­outs ei­ther through the Cepep or URP pro­grammes or oth­er­wise. The prob­lem with this is that it ba­si­cal­ly gives you a fish for a day so that you are in a per­pet­u­al state of need­ing me to give you that fish, be­cause I will nev­er teach you to fish for your­self, be­cause in such a case you will no longer need me nor be de­pen­dent on me.

This is some­thing that Dr Mor­gan Job has said ad in­fini­tum, ad nau­se­am, though in his own iras­ci­ble and inim­itable style, where the val­ue and con­tent of the mes­sage could some­times be lost due to the forth­right­ness and abra­sive­ness of its de­liv­ery, but the point needs to be not­ed and for sure, on the morn­ing of May 25, 2010, it was a rude awak­en­ing in­deed for many die-hard PN­Mites. Faced with what is es­sen­tial­ly Hob­sons choice of sink or swim, it is hoped that many of those who for­mer­ly thought that they could on­ly sur­vive on the gravy train of PNM de­pen­den­cy, will now re­alise that they have to get up and get just like the rest of us and toil, labour and strive, to make a dai­ly liv­ing and to make ends meet.

This should be a unique and spe­cial op­por­tu­ni­ty for many Afro-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans and PNM die-hard sup­port­ers, who were not pre­vi­ous­ly do­ing so, to show great cre­ativ­i­ty, in­ven­tive­ness and in­dus­try. In times of tri­al or cri­sis it can some­times bring out the worst or the best of peo­ple and with the PNM in cri­sis, its fol­low­ers should use this op­por­tu­ni­ty to strive to bring out the best in them­selves. They need to un­der­stand the val­ue of hard work and sac­ri­fice and to recog­nise that thrift, econ­o­my and pru­dence are virtues to be ad­mired and ap­plied in one's dai­ly life as op­posed to the il­lu­so­ry val­ues of a BET cul­ture where fleet­ing flash and "bling" are the or­der of the day–here to­day; gone to­mor­row.

They need to un­der­stand that true wealth and strength as a peo­ple as a com­mu­ni­ty does not come overnight or in a day or a week but through decades of hard work, dili­gence and unit­ed ef­fort. They need to un­der­stand that they are at the bot­tom of the so­cio-eco­nom­ic lad­der in Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter decades of PNM rule and that they were de­lib­er­ate­ly kept there for a rea­son so that they could be kept de­pen­dent on the rul­ing par­ty. They need to un­der­stand that they are at the bot­tom of the Ed­u­ca­tion totem pole and they must not hate the mes­sen­ger when Sat Ma­haraj and Mor­gan Job point this out to them.

If they do not be­lieve this then speak to Pro­fes­sor Courte­nay Bartholomew and he can tell you what the per­cent­ages of ad­mis­sions and suc­cess­es are like for Afro-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans in the ar­eas of med­i­cine, den­tistry, vet sci­ences and oth­ers. The PNM di­as­po­ra needs to wake up and smell the cof­fee, po­lit­i­cal em­pow­er­ment is not just about slav­ish­ly vot­ing your lead­ers back in­to of­fice every five years when they come around with their bag of good­ies and sleigh load of promis­es. The PNM par­ty faith­ful need to re­alise that po­lit­i­cal em­pow­er­ment al­so means em­pow­er­ment of them as per­sons who are ca­pa­ble of shap­ing and fash­ion­ing their own des­tinies and be­ing mas­ters of their own fu­ture.

Clear­ly, to a large ex­tent they felt that they were not get­ting that with the old PNM and the chal­lenge now for Dr Row­ley is to try to re-build, re-fash­ion and re-shape the par­ty and its im­age, to make it at­trac­tive to a more alert, aware and in­ci­sive type of peo­ple, who once hav­ing tast­ed free­dom, may be very much dis­in­clined to go back to do­ing things the old way. It is a flu­id, dy­nam­ic sit­u­a­tion and one which must be as­sessed and analysed very care­ful­ly be­cause the re­al vic­to­ry for the peo­ple which may have been caused by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, could be the Eman­ci­pa­tion from PNM de­pen­den­cy.