As T&T heads to the polls, this is part four of a se­ries on women who un­der­stood pow­er not as spec­ta­cle but as ser­vice.

Ira Math­ur

Ahead of the Gen­er­al Elec­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go a sense of dis­en­chant­ment clings to the po­lit­i­cal air: slo­gans with­out sub­stance, spec­ta­cle with­out mean­ing. At this mo­ment, our eyes can turn east­ward across the Less­er An­tilles to Bar­ba­dos, where Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley has emerged as the Caribbean’s most in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly co­her­ent and eth­i­cal­ly ground­ed leader.

Mot­t­ley is not a pop­ulist nor a saint. In the tra­di­tion of the best lead­ers, she is a cus­to­di­an of in­sti­tu­tions, truth, and the long-term wel­fare of her peo­ple. She gov­erns with a clar­i­ty of pur­pose rarely seen in a re­gion worn down by cor­rup­tion, pa­tron­age, and the the­atre of pow­er. Her lead­er­ship, while charis­mat­ic, is not the­atri­cal. It does not hunger for ap­plause. In­stead, it seeks to re­shape the foun­da­tions.

Ed­u­cat­ed at LSE ( Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics), trained in law, and born in­to a po­lit­i­cal lin­eage, Mot­t­ley has been in pub­lic life since her twen­ties. Both priv­i­lege and pre­car­i­ty shaped Mot­t­ley’s ear­ly life in Bridgetown. Her grand­fa­ther, Ernest Mot­t­ley, served as the first may­or of Bridgetown. Her fa­ther, El­liott Mot­t­ley, was a bar­ris­ter and diplo­mat. But it was not just pedi­gree that formed her—Bar­ba­dos in the 1970s was a so­ci­ety in tran­si­tion, tee­ter­ing be­tween the lega­cies of em­pire and the ur­gen­cies of a new Black po­lit­i­cal con­scious­ness.

Mot­t­ley came of age lis­ten­ing to Er­rol Bar­row’s speech­es and read­ing the work of CLR James and George Lam­ming. She quick­ly un­der­stood lead­er­ship was not about be­ing liked—it was about be­ing just. She al­so learned, per­haps too ear­ly, how women are scru­ti­nised dif­fer­ent­ly in pub­lic life. Yet in­stead of soft­en­ing her voice, she deep­ened it—both in tone and in ar­gu­ment.

Mot­t­ley’s in­flu­ences be­long to a broad Caribbean canon of thinkers who placed jus­tice be­fore pow­er. She has cit­ed Ka­mau Brath­waite’s po­et­ics of na­tion lan­guage as a metaphor for po­lit­i­cal imag­i­na­tion: to lead is to speak in ways our peo­ple can feel, not just hear. Her poli­cies re­flect that ethos.

In her 2021 UN ad­dress, Mot­t­ley spoke of cli­mate change but al­so in­equal­i­ty, ex­trac­tion, and moral col­lapse which has a domi­no ef­fect. “If we do not con­trol this fire, it will burn us all.”

Her speech­es, of­ten quot­ed but sel­dom im­i­tat­ed, are not per­for­mances but acts of ac­count­abil­i­ty. She speaks as a Caribbean daugh­ter aware of the weight of her in­her­i­tance—from slav­ery, colo­nial­ism, and Black in­tel­lec­tu­al re­sis­tance.

As chair of Cari­com, Mot­t­ley laid bare the lay­ered emer­gen­cies fac­ing the Caribbean, de­clar­ing: “Our world is in tur­moil. I will not sug­ar­coat it. These are among the most test­ing times for our re­gion since most of our mem­bers gained in­de­pen­dence.”

Mot­t­ley has reimag­ined what it means to be a post-colo­nial state. Un­der her lead­er­ship, Bar­ba­dos sev­ered its ties with the British monar­chy—not in an act of sym­bol­ic na­tion­al­ism, but as a clear-eyed cor­rec­tion of his­to­ry. It was, in her words, “about fin­ish­ing the un­fin­ished busi­ness of in­de­pen­dence”.

And yet, Mot­t­ley’s pow­er is not on­ly in what she says or does. It lies in how she with­holds. In an age of al­go­rith­mic ex­cess, she does not chase vi­ral­i­ty. She choos­es sub­stance over spec­ta­cle. Her si­lences—strate­gic and de­lib­er­ate—speak to a leader who un­der­stands that to act eth­i­cal­ly is of­ten to speak less and lis­ten more.

This sep­a­rates Mot­t­ley from the men who crowd Caribbean pol­i­tics: she re­sists the temp­ta­tions of om­nipo­tence. In her hands, pow­er is nei­ther mas­cu­line nor ma­ter­nal. It is struc­tur­al, ac­count­able, and al­ways re­turns to first prin­ci­ples.

In a re­gion where pol­i­tics of­ten mim­ics the pos­tures of colo­nial au­thor­i­ty, Mia Mot­t­ley of­fers an al­ter­na­tive: pow­er not as dom­i­na­tion but as care, gov­er­nance not as in­her­i­tance but as stew­ard­ship.

For decades, pol­i­tics in T&T has been a game of one-up­man­ship: a the­atre of pos­tur­ing, blame, and de­flec­tion. Politi­cians sling mud and in­sults at one an­oth­er while re­al prob­lems—crime, ed­u­ca­tion, in­fra­struc­ture, eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion—fes­ter. The coun­try’s youth watch their fu­tures shrink. Vi­o­lence is a part of class­rooms. Teach­ers, es­pe­cial­ly those in un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties, face threats not just from stu­dents but from crim­i­nal net­works that pro­tect them.

Gang cul­ture, fu­elled by un­po­liced flows of guns and drugs through porous ports, holds en­tire com­mu­ni­ties hostage.

Politi­cians of­ten frater­nise with so-called “com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers”—a term some­times used eu­phemisti­cal­ly to de­scribe in­di­vid­u­als who wield sig­nif­i­cant con­trol over a neigh­bour­hood, of­ten through il­lic­it or in­for­mal pow­er struc­tures that have be­come in­dis­tin­guish­able from for­mal po­lit­i­cal au­thor­i­ty.

Mean­while, brain drain ac­cel­er­ates. Ran­dom, chill­ing as­sas­si­na­tions haunt dai­ly life.

Re­spond­ing to the crum­bling so­ci­ety we are, visa re­stric­tions have tight­ened (the most re­cent be­ing the UK) Coun­tries like the US is­sue trav­el ad­vi­sories. And no leader, man or woman, has yet man­aged to ad­dress this col­lapse with courage or co­her­ence.

What, then, might our politi­cians in T&T learn from Mot­t­ley?

First, lead­er­ship is not an in­her­i­tance but a dis­ci­pline. It is cul­ti­vat­ed in si­lence, test­ed in cri­sis, and ex­pressed not in de­c­la­ra­tions but in con­sis­ten­cy of ac­tion. Sec­ond, re­form is not a head­line but a habit—one that de­mands hu­mil­i­ty, con­sul­ta­tion, and an un­der­stand­ing that the State is not a tool for self-en­rich­ment but a ves­sel for col­lec­tive dig­ni­ty. Fi­nal­ly, that pow­er is not di­min­ished when stripped of spec­ta­cle. It be­comes, fi­nal­ly, a form of ser­vice.

This mo­ment de­mands less spec­ta­cle and more sub­stance. The scale of our cri­sis—col­laps­ing in­sti­tu­tions, out­flow­ing tal­ent, dai­ly fear—de­mands that we move be­yond elec­toral cy­cles and the il­lu­sion that change ar­rives on­ly through a bal­lot. It de­mands struc­tur­al work, moral clar­i­ty, and the courage to serve rather than per­form.

To­mor­row, the peo­ple of T&T go to the polls. As we mark the eve of our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rit­u­al, let us re­mem­ber that the mea­sure of a na­tion lies not in the vol­ume of its promis­es but in the qui­et con­stan­cy of ser­vice. The test be­fore us is not of charis­ma but of care, not of rhetoric but of re­pair. Let ser­vice be­fore self be our lit­mus test. Who­ev­er as­sumes of­fice in T&T would do well to study her, not for mim­ic­ry but for guid­ance.

At the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, Mot­t­ley’s al­ma mater, she got to the heart of the mat­ter: “What is the point, my friends, of be­ing able to go to the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund and get a pro­gramme if your peo­ple are falling apart at home? If your chil­dren can­not go to school, if your hos­pi­tals don’t work, if your garbage is not col­lect­ed, if your peo­ple are turn­ing off from pub­lic ser­vice be­cause of poor re­mu­ner­a­tion and bad con­di­tions?

“This is not about five-year cy­cles. This is about build­ing a na­tion. We need Caribbean gov­ern­ments to stop man­ag­ing crises and start gov­ern­ing with courage.

“Lead­er­ship is not about the­atrics. It is about sub­stance. It is about fac­ing hard truths and telling our peo­ple: we can do bet­ter, we must do bet­ter, and we will do it to­geth­er—be­cause we have no choice.”

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia colum­nist and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir Love The Dark Days. Au­thor in­quiries : iras­room@gmail.com web­site: www.iras­room.org