As the votes rolled in from Thurs­day's night Brex­it vote which the Re­main group lost to the Out group, one can­not but think about our own short-lived fed­er­a­tion, April 22, 1958 to May 1962.

I re­mem­ber vivid­ly when Michael Man­ley, leader of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Par­ty (PNP), then pre­mier of Ja­maica, called a ref­er­en­dum to gauge the voice of the Ja­maican peo­ple on whether or not to re­main in the West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion which was in­au­gu­rat­ed by the late Princess Mar­garet, and which he lost to his cousin, Sir Alexan­der Bus­ta­mante of the Ja­maica Labour Par­ty (JLP). And fol­low­ing this rit­u­al Bus­ta­mante's par­ty won the gen­er­al elec­tions and led Ja­maica to in­de­pen­dence in Au­gust 1962, fol­lowed three weeks lat­er by T&T led by Dr Er­ic Williams who was the leader of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

De­spite claims of Dr Williams' strong ad­vo­ca­cy of democ­ra­cy and the pro­mul­ga­tion of the will of the peo­ple, he failed to fol­low Ja­maica's ex­am­ple. In­stead, he sar­cas­ti­cal­ly belt­ed out that on the fu­ture of the Fed­er­a­tion, "one from ten leaves nought." And Dr Williams uni­lat­er­al­ly worked to­wards this coun­try's in­de­pen­dence, much to the dis­may of the small­er Caribbean coun­tries and even the British.

Had T&T fol­lowed the path of Ja­maica then, and British Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron now, maybe T&T would prob­a­bly have been in the same sit­u­a­tion as Cameron. To­day, Cameron may have dif­fer­ent thoughts on his style of gov­er­nance of Britain which has cost him his prime min­is­te­r­i­al job. How­ev­er, he kept his promise to the British peo­ple and would re­main a mod­ern day British states­men.

The Unit­ed King­dom's ref­er­en­dum on its fu­ture as­so­ci­a­tion with Eu­rope is a se­ri­ous les­son for all world lead­ers, not the least be­ing the Caribbean is­land-states.

If my mem­o­ry serves me right, Ja­maica is the on­ly coun­try on this side of the At­lantic to have used the method of a ref­er­en­dum, as es­poused by Jean Jacques Rousseau one of the he­roes of the French Rev­o­lu­tion, seek­ing refuge in the gen­er­al will of the pop­u­lace.

It is there­fore in­cum­bent on lead­ers, all lead­ers, at in­ter­vals, to re­turn to the peo­ple and get their thoughts on their lead­er­ship traits.

Pow­er or no pow­er, lead­er­ship must al­ways keep in con­tact with the pop­u­lace and this ini­tia­tive would cer­tain­ly fur­ther en­hance the con­cept of democ­ra­cy.

We, in the Caribbean, could de­vel­op our own style of lead­er­ship and democ­ra­cy which oth­er coun­tries could em­u­late.

T&T could fol­low this pat­tern of gov­er­nance on sev­er­al is­sues of state and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Let us give it a try–a se­ri­ous try.

Paras Ra­moutar,

Ca­paro