DR HAMID GHANY

In re­cent times, the is­sues of coali­tions and of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism have formed their own coali­tion as the pe­ri­od lead­ing up to the fes­ti­val of Di­vali came to a crescen­do last week. One state­ment by Jack Warn­er about di­ver­si­ty or the lack of it in a pub­lic march led to a com­plete change of con­ver­sa­tion that dropped the very sub­ject of the march it­self off the na­tion­al radar screen.

The fol­low-up punch was an ob­vi­ous­ly or­ches­trat­ed con­tro­ver­sy in­volv­ing the Di­vali Na­gar and the at­ten­dance of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Dr Row­ley, which was fol­lowed by fur­ther com­ments at the Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cy Di­vali cel­e­bra­tion by Warn­er.

All of this was done at a time when Row­ley was emerg­ing from a "makeover" ex­er­cise at the PNM con­ven­tion that was de­signed to por­tray his soft­er side. The fol­low-up was to give him a new pro­file as some­one who would be open to a mul­ti­cul­tur­al world­view as op­posed to a west­ern, Chris­t­ian world­view.

His for­ay in­to the Di­vali Na­gar site in the midst of a con­tro­ver­sy that had clear­ly been cre­at­ed by Warn­er put the spot­light on the PNM leader with com­par­isons be­ing made about who from the PNM ever came there be­fore and who was com­ing now and why were they com­ing now.

In the midst of all of this, Dr Mooni­lal and sub­se­quent­ly Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­called the con­tro­ver­sy ear­li­er in the year when the Prime Min­is­ter was round­ly crit­i­cised by Row­ley for her ges­ture to­wards the In­di­an pres­i­dent. That par­tic­u­lar jux­ta­po­si­tion at that spe­cif­ic mo­ment of "makeover" ma­noeu­vre at the Di­vali Na­gar was a telling coun­terof­fen­sive to re­mind the au­di­ence of some­thing awk­ward, the sig­nif­i­cance of which they would un­der­stand.

Es­sen­tial­ly, what has hap­pened is that the Hin­du vot­er is now far more sta­tis­ti­cal­ly rel­e­vant to­day than at any time be­fore. As a con­se­quence, the PNM has ob­vi­ous­ly come to this re­al­i­sa­tion and is seek­ing to overt­ly demon­strate that it is will­ing to adopt a more mul­ti­cul­tur­al ap­proach than be­fore.

This is ob­vi­ous­ly dri­ven by the fact that the PNM recog­nis­es that its path­way back to pow­er has to pass through thou­sands of Hin­du vot­ers in mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies who have not felt very wel­come at the hands of the par­ty over the last 50 years.

The sta­tis­ti­cians who are ad­vis­ing the PNM lead­er­ship will have recog­nised that the de­mo­graph­ics of Trinidad have changed to such an ex­tent that in many mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies, the Hin­du vot­er (who can make the dif­fer­ence) is more like­ly to sup­port the UNC than the PNM.

In the cir­cum­stances, the PNM now has to tone down the at­tacks that have re­li­gious and rit­u­al­is­tic over­tones (like the at­tack on the Prime Min­is­ter for her ges­ture to­wards the In­di­an pres­i­dent) and seek to ex­tend the hand of friend­ship and peace in­stead.

The UNC has moved ahead of the PNM in chang­ing the im­age of their par­ty to re­flect the mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism that is the stat­ed pol­i­cy of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. The PNM con­tin­ues to be crit­i­cised about its lack of di­ver­si­ty and clear­ly the lead­er­ship is mov­ing to re­spond to this be­cause of its elec­toral and po­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance.

All of this has sud­den­ly as­sumed a new lev­el of im­por­tance be­cause of one com­ment by Jack Warn­er about di­ver­si­ty. How­ev­er, his com­ments about di­ver­si­ty al­so ap­ply to the is­sue of form­ing coali­tions. Dr Row­ley is on record as dis­miss­ing the "stand alone, win alone, lose alone" state­ment of Patrick Man­ning of 1995. This has opened the door to some kind of coali­tion or al­liance out­look on the part of the PNM in or­der to re­main com­pet­i­tive.

How­ev­er, the re­cent at­tempt by the PNM to have rudi­men­ta­ry coali­tion talks with the MSJ and the JTUM that led to the Sec­tion 34 pub­lic march two weeks ago has not yield­ed any cross-eth­nic sup­port, hence the move in­to the Di­vali Na­gar site with the at­ten­dant wardrobe makeover.

The PNM now finds it­self in new ter­ri­to­ry on two fronts, name­ly open­ing coali­tion di­a­logues with pos­si­ble part­ners and al­so shift­ing from a dom­i­nant west­ern, Chris­t­ian world­view to­wards a mul­ti­cul­tur­al world­view. The for­mer will have to con­tend with the watch­words of the par­ty, "Great is the PNM and it shall pre­vail," while the lat­ter has to con­tend with some bad his­to­ry of the dis­tant past as well as of re­cent vin­tage.

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) is al­so hav­ing to make some ad­just­ments of its own. Their new­ly-elect­ed chair, Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, has made it clear that her mis­sion is to try to woo back dis­en­chant­ed for­mer sup­port­ers of the par­ty. Part of that ef­fort will re­quire a di­ag­no­sis to find out where they may have gone.

In un­der­tak­ing that process of in­tro­spec­tion to re­gain lost sup­port­ers, the par­ty still has to de­cide whether it in­tends to have pow­er-shar­ing as a core phi­los­o­phy or whether it wish­es to be a par­ty that will de­vel­op it­self on its own with­out coali­tion part­ner­ships in or­der to seek to cap­ture pow­er on its own. The PNM may al­so now be go­ing in­to this phase af­ter 56 years of not imag­in­ing it.