Mickela Panday
Over the past week, race has once again dominated the national conversation, pushing aside the issues that affect every citizen.
As citizens, we should ask ourselves why.
When governments come under pressure, there comes a moment when promises collide with reality. People begin asking harder questions. They want to know why crime is not being reduced, why the economy is not improving, why the cost of living is not becoming more manageable and why their quality of life is not getting better.
Those are the questions every government should be prepared to answer.
Yet too often, the national conversation shifts. Instead of discussing performance, we begin discussing identity. Instead of debating solutions, we begin debating each other.
That should concern every citizen, regardless of political affiliation.
Race has always been one of the easiest fault lines for some politicians to exploit. Our history has left real wounds and real inequalities, and those should never be ignored or dismissed. But neither should they be manipulated for political convenience. There is an important difference between confronting our history honestly and using it to divide people in the present.
The politics of division has always been easier than the politics of delivery. It is far simpler to convince people to dislike one another than it is to explain why promises have not been fulfilled. It is easier to rally supporters around emotion than around measurable results.
But easy politics rarely produces good government.
The truth is that crime does not distinguish between race before it claims another victim. Inflation does not ask who your grandparents were before it empties your wallet. Long waits for healthcare, deteriorating roads and economic uncertainty affect citizens across every community in this country.
The problems we face are shared. Our politics should reflect that reality.
Another great danger of race politics is that it distracts us. Once citizens begin viewing every national issue through an ethnic or political lens, accountability becomes harder to demand. Questions about crime, healthcare, education, jobs and the economy become secondary to questions about loyalty and identity. Governments should be judged by whether they improve people’s lives, not by how effectively they persuade supporters that every criticism is simply coming from “the other side.”
Our history has taught us that whenever Trinidad and Tobago becomes consumed by division, everyone loses. We become less willing to listen. Less willing to cooperate. Less willing to believe that someone different from us could want the same things we do: a safer country, a stronger economy and a better future for our children.
That is not nation-building. It is nation-breaking.
At a time when the world is becoming more uncertain, we simply cannot afford it.
Small states like ours do not have the luxury of endless political distractions. We compete every day for investment, tourism, trade and international confidence. Investors look for stability. Businesses look for predictability. Our regional and international partners look for maturity in leadership.
A country that appears permanently divided projects uncertainty far beyond its shores.
Strong foreign policy begins with strong domestic leadership. A government that cannot unite its own people will struggle to inspire confidence abroad. The respect we earn internationally is closely linked to the confidence we build at home.
Leadership is not measured by how effectively you can divide a room. It is measured by whether you can unite a country around solutions. It is not about finding new enemies whenever criticism grows louder. It is about answering criticism with competence, transparency and results.
In every democracy, governments will be criticised. That is neither unusual nor unhealthy. Citizens have every right to question those they elect. They have every right to ask whether promises have been kept, whether public money has been wisely spent and whether the country is moving in the right direction.
Those questions should never be treated as acts of disloyalty.
We should also think about the example we are setting for the next generation. Young Trinbagonians are growing up in a far more connected world. They increasingly judge leaders by their competence rather than their ethnicity. We should be encouraging that progress, not pulling them back into arguments they did not create.
A confident government answers difficult questions. An insecure government looks for distractions.
Trinidad and Tobago deserves leaders who are willing to have the harder conversation, reducing crime instead of simply managing it, creating opportunities for young people instead of watching them leave, growing the economy instead of merely talking about it, strengthening institutions instead of weakening public trust.
The easiest thing in politics is to divide people. The hardest thing is to unite them around a common purpose.
History will not remember who was most successful at reopening old wounds. It will remember who had the courage to heal them.
The people of Trinidad and Tobago deserve answers, not distractions. They deserve leadership that unites instead of divides, that answers rather than distracts and that understands the future of this country will never be built by reopening yesterday’s wounds, but by earning the confidence of its people through competence, accountability and results.
Mickela Panday is the Political Leader of the Patriotic Front and Attorney at Law
