Hochoy's Resignation
By Dr. Winford James
March 20, 2005
On Tuesday, January 25 this year, one week after the DAC's and his own defeat in the Tobago House of Assembly elections, political leader Hochoy Charles announced that he had 'sent in' his resignation and his party had rejected it. The next day, he explained in a telephone interview with a newspaper that convention required that 'once you are political leader and lose, you should send in your resignation.' But not surprisingly, the matter has gone with hardly any commentary in the Trinidad media.
A man who has been a senator, a minister in the national government, deputy Chairman of the THA, political leader of the Tobago NAR, Chief Secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly, minority leader of THA, and political leader of the revived DAC resigns, and the Trinidad media barely take notice. The resignation itself was unusual in our practice of politics and should have, by virtue of that fact alone, commanded widespread debate in what are misnamed our 'national media', but its importance was lost on our Trinidad commentators.
Had Panday or Manning resigned when their parties lost the general elections they did, the commentators would have doubtless got going, such is the trinicentrism of our polity. Indeed, even when they didn't, the commentaries flew left and right. The attitude is another in the long litany of disconnections between Trinidadian politics (sometimes mistakenly conceptualised as 'national' politics) and Tobagonian politics.
The Hochoy Charles resignation is worthy of widespread commentary for a number of reasons. First, it came when water more than flour. Charles had lost five elections - four as leader of the Tobago NAR and the other as the brandnew political leader of the DAC. It came not only after he had lost the Plymouth / Golden Lane seat in the recent THA elections but also after he had not won the Tobago West seat in the last general elections. The convention he invoked after the fifth and latest setback must have held after the previous setbacks, especially after those in which he was personally defeated, but he was not a believer then. What caused the conversion? Is the tradition of not budging after electoral defeat so strong (witness the cases of Manning and Panday) that he needed five damaging strikes to do the honourable thing?
A second reason for the need for widespread commentary is that it is Charles himself who announced both the resignation and its rejection by his party's executive. Astonishing! The political leader of a party resigns (or 'sends in' his resignation) and nobody else in the party can be found (not even the deputy political leader), or sees it as their duty, to come forward to both break the news and tell of the party's considered response to the development. It is Charles himself who does, perpetuating the unhappy view of himself as the Voice of One - the Only One in the Hierarchy - and, consequently, of the party as being structureless from a democratic point of view.
A third reason is that we do not really know what he did when he announced his resignation. Had he resigned? Or, had he tendered his resignation? And, in respect of both scenarios, was he telling the truth? He is the one who informed us. You would expect that if a political leader resigned, the rest of the executive would discuss the resignation and either leave him be or beg him to come back. And you would expect that if he tendered (sent in?) his resignation, the rest of the executive would either accept it or reject it. What really happened?
The simple and uncomfortable answer is that we do not know. We have no copy of any tendered letter of resignation. We have no official besides Charles himself telling us he resigned. And we have no investigative journalist who has dug to find out.
All of which suggests an uncomfortable posturing on the part of Charles and vitiates the honour that is associated with his invocation of the convention of a political leader resigning after electoral defeat.
If you are going to resign, do so honourably!
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