Only a matter of time

The ordinary people who stormed the Bastille in 1789, for example, gave us the enduring watch words “liberty, equality and fraternity”. So did the peasants of the Mexican Revolution who fought their oppressors against all odds. Are our “rank and file” of that ilk? They must be of some importance because of the way our politicians are tumbling over one another to meet and greet them.

Kamla is hugging and kissing everywhere knowing full well that she doesnot have a chance of a snowball in hell to do a single thing for them, considering the present circumstances of the UNC. Manning hugs and kisses ever so often also, but he is more self-assured, since he has the goods to make the common people happy and so win their votes. Dookeran is also trying, but he has neither the false smiles of Kamla, nor the material resources of Manning to woo them, only honesty and integrity, which they can hardly understand.

But what is this hold which the “rank and file” have on politicians?

It is simply a matter of numbers! Success in the Westminster system requires a majority and they are in the majority, herded together by their commonalities of illiteracy and poverty. Never mind their inability to make informed decisions or to recognise their own exploitation by unconscionable politicians, who are the movers and shakers of “true democracy.”

It is the ultimate irony that people who often do not know what is good for themselves are the determinants of what is good for the nation. But they, in their innocence, must not be condemned. They can only be true to their own simple-mindedness. The true villains however, are the politicians who are awesome of their incapacities, but use them to advance their own agendas.

Manning will use their majority status to get re-elected and Kamla to become the leader of the Opposition. The latest in the attempt to exploit the slavish adulation of “little” people is the UNC executive’s plan to oust Dookeran, using them to legitimise their underhandedness. Dookeran is the only politician who seems to care, but the “rank and file”, vulnerable to the machinations of self-seekers as the UNC cabal, will see him as the enemy, and cast him out. What a travesty of true democracy! Yet let such men and women be warned: “There is an even-handed justice which commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips.” It is only a matter of time!

BEN E KING

Phillipine