To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?In a stun­ning and swift re­ver­sal, Aus­tralia's La­bor Par­ty changed its po­lit­i­cal leader and prime min­is­ter overnight, re­plac­ing Kevin Rudd with the coun­try's first fe­male to hold the po­si­tion, Ju­lia Gillard.

Mr Rudd's re­moval from of­fice is even more star­tling be­cause of his ini­tial pop­u­lar­i­ty. So well loved had he be­come that the feel­ing was that he would cer­tain­ly get a sec­ond term. The BBC News re­port­ed yes­ter­day that there was even talk of a "Rudd era" that could spread over a decade. He had even be­gun to be likened to the coun­try's leg­endary Prime Min­is­ter, Bob Hawke, who ruled the 1980s. Mr Rudd be­gan run­ning in­to trou­ble late last year and ear­ly this year when he first re­neged on his cam­paign promise to de­vel­op strate­gies and poli­cies to counter the grow­ing neg­a­tive ef­fects of cli­mate change. Aus­tralia is par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to the dam­ag­ing ef­fects of cli­mate change as large parts of the coun­try have been turned in­to vir­tu­al deserts as a re­sult of a with­er­ing drought that went on for years.

Mr Rudd made a good im­pres­sion when he vis­it­ed Trinidad last No­vem­ber for the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing, ho­n­our­ing Bri­an Lara, T&T's most fa­mous son, and ad­vo­cat­ing that 25 per cent of a US$10 bil­lion fast-start fund aimed at ad­dress­ing the ef­fects of cli­mate change should go to small-is­land de­vel­op­ing states. Short­ly af­ter his vis­it to Port-of-Spain, Mr Rudd was per­ceived to have re­treat­ed on a car­bon emis­sions ex­change pro­gramme scheme and got in­to se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties with Aus­tralia's pow­er­ful min­ing lob­by over a pro­posed new tax sys­tem. The sys­tem pro­posed would have earned the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment an an­nu­al ad­di­tion­al Aus$9 bil­lion (US$8.3 bil­lion) in tax rev­enue from the sec­tor. In the tough Aussie cul­ture, well-known to West In­di­an crick­et, Mr Rudd's re­ver­sal was seen as be­ing "gut­less." To com­pound his un­pop­u­lar­i­ty, Mr Rudd came to be known as "aloof" and not com­mu­nica­tive with his cab­i­net mem­bers.

In a de­ci­sive move, se­nior mem­bers of the La­bor Par­ty ini­ti­at­ed an elec­tion Wednes­day night to vote for a new po­lit­i­cal leader, know­ing that the po­lit­i­cal leader of the rul­ing par­ty in West­min­ster democ­ra­cies au­to­mat­i­cal­ly steps in­to the prime min­is­ter's chair. Mr Rudd did not even both­er to con­test know­ing the lev­el of his un­pop­u­lar­i­ty in the par­ty. In the cir­cum­stances Ms Gillard, who was Mr Rudd's deputy in of­fice, swept all be­fore her and was cat­a­pult­ed in­to the prime min­is­ter­ship. The con­text of the de­ci­sion by the La­bor Par­ty was the re­al­i­ty of a gen­er­al elec­tion by Oc­to­ber and with the par­ty be­ing con­scious that with Mr Rudd in po­si­tion it was al­most cer­tain de­feat. There are a few con­trasts with the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of T&T's par­ty and gov­er­nance sys­tem, made very ap­par­ent by the PNM gov­ern­ment and its prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning.

The first is the ob­vi­ous dis­po­si­tion of the Aus­tralian po­lit­i­cal and par­ty sys­tem not to be dom­i­nat­ed by one in­di­vid­ual. Sure­ly, too, the par­ty did not give over con­trol of the in­sti­tu­tions of the or­gan­i­sa­tion to its po­lit­i­cal leader. It con­trolled the sys­tem to call an in­ter­nal elec­tion and to nom­i­nate the win­ner to the po­si­tion of prime min­is­ter with­out the abil­i­ty of Mr Rudd to in­ter­vene to pre­serve his crown.

Notwith­stand­ing the fact that many se­nior of­fi­cials and large num­bers of peo­ple at low­er lev­els in the PNM knew that Mr Man­ning was no longer po­lit­i­cal­ly good look­ing, they stood by and watched as the par­ty pre-col­lapsed in of­fice. The sec­ond sig­nif­i­cant les­son out of the Aus­tralian sit­u­a­tion is the fact that the par­ty con­tin­ues to have a say in the gov­er­nance process af­ter elect­ing its leader. In our po­lit­i­cal cul­ture, it is un­heard of that the par­ty could in­ter­vene and dic­tate in any fash­ion what hap­pens at the lev­el of gov­ern­ment. Mr Man­ning would not have tol­er­at­ed any such at­tempt to dic­tate to him by the par­ty, as in­deed those who pre­ced­ed him would not have done. The third sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence with what hap­pened here is the room for dis­sent with­in the par­ty and gov­ern­ment com­pared to what hap­pened un­der Mr Man­ning, Mr Pan­day, Mr Robin­son and Dr Williams. It is per­haps too ear­ly to say what will hap­pen in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship.

The mes­sage must now be sent that the in­ter­na­tion­al po­lit­i­cal cul­ture is chang­ing from the dom­i­nant mod­el of the past where the leader rules with­out ques­tion.