Empower The People

12, April 1999
In recent times people, particularly in the outlying districts, have banded together to protest vehemently the lack of certain amenities such as water, proper roads, bridges, etc. They have blocked roadways at peak hours and burned debris to bring attention to their plight.

In Mayaro and Maloney at one point, matters seemed to be heading to open confrontation between citizens and the forces of law and order. Parliamentary and local government representatives, on both sides of the divide, seemed at a loss to make sense of what was developing.

Villagers were adamant in their articulation of the view that they will no longer vote for anyone who did not seek their interest and consult them on a continuous basis.

In the town meetings broadcast by 102FM, the demand for independent representatives, beholden to neither of the established political parties, suddenly began to emanate from the very bowels of certain well-known political strongholds.

Shouldn't this be regarded as signal enough that the people, by their demonstrations, are teasing at a greater involvement in the process of governance? Clearly, they wish to have more "say" in what is to happen within their communities. Ideally, that is what in their view "independence" and then "republicanism" were supposed to have brought them after the removal of colonialism.

If you say publicly today, "empower the people", surely no one will disagree, since "empowerment" has become internationally the most popular "buzz" word of the present times.

No one disagrees precisely because the said word has come to mean nothing. We dare say, however, that once you begin to attempt to conceptualise and concretise what "empowerment" of the people should and must mean, all hell will break loose. It cannot be anything other than a radical transformation of what now obtains and what many seem to feel is sacrosanct.

Since Independence, we have been wielding a participatory democratic system. People participate mainly by means of representatives elected on the basis of full adult suffrage.

These representatives are coalesced within highly centralised political parties that contest each other every five years in accordance with the stipulations spelt out in the Constitution.

These parties are led by maximum leaders who exercise, within the party structures, unlimited power derived from their popularity in the strongholds of the base support.

The political astuteness of such leaders is usually measured and judged, not by the correctness and depth of their policies and programmes, but, by their capacity to manipulate this popularity and translate this into votes to keep themselves and their party of representatives in power, if they are the incumbents, or win the plums of power and takeover, if they were the opposition. Hence the "who we go put?" syndrome rather than "what we go put?"

There seemed to be no need before to look beyond, until the masses of people themselves began to come to the realisation that the very system of representation, the very core of their participatory democracy, has become a stumbling block to democracy, ie, government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

In social development, everything becomes its very opposite. That's the lesson.

Party politics pigeon-holed as it is within the present constitutional framework deters democratic functioning.

In the town meetings, more and more of you are hearing people denounce the party system and call for the emergence of "independents" over whom they seem to feel they can exercise control. Are we suggesting a return to the pre-1956 era? That shall quickly prove to be a dead end.

Party politics in the late '50s and early '60s was an advancement to the heyday of the "independents" who failed to create the unity and focus that was essential to mobilise the country against colonialism; party politics then served to broaden political activity and enhanced our democratic life.

Times have since changed. We are today facing a whole new world with a whole new set of complex relationships involving questions of race, class and gender and socio-economics that were not as sharply defined in the anti-colonial struggles.

The party system as designed and managed is now too limited to embrace the new articulation and demonstrations from below. The logic must be to open up rather than limit in any way the democratic process. To begin this, we must revisit the Constitution that is supposed to be the binding social contract between every man, woman and child within the boundaries of this nation.

And the purpose must not be to tinker with the Constitution as some are suggesting and/or proposing to do by way of the legislature thereby giving the impression that the only interest is to increase the personal power of the present incumbents to allow them to do whatever they may desire.

The purpose, on the contrary, must be to deepen and extend the democratic process, minimise "one-manism", and allow people to exercise power in their assemblies where they live and where they work.

Ironically, the present Speaker of our House many years ago as a private citizen had gone to Jamaica and witnessed similar proposals for the empowerment of people and he came back to TT and wrote an article praising the proposals and even suggesting a personal commitment to such efforts in the region.

The very issue of Tobago in no way detracts from such conceptualisation of people's empowerment. Much of what Vanus James has to propose is worthwhile; however, he must set his sights on empowering the people of Tobago rather than merely the THA representatives themselves. Tobago has a wonderful opportunity to lead TT in the articulation of full-fledged empowerment.

The Independent Tobago senator, Dr Eastlyn McKenzie, in addressing the Tobago branch of the Association of Village and Community Councils and the THA's Community Development Division, warned that "if the village council movement and the affiliated groups youth groups, women's groups, etc die, we will soon have an autocracy in the country, we'll have no democracy" When an idea's time has come, nothing can stand in its way.