No end to disconnect between people, Govt

The disconnect is as wide as it has ever been. It is a part of our nation’s DNA. The question is how do we reconcile that relationship with the kind of leadership that we have at this time.

On May 17, Winford James lamented about the relations between the people and Government.

Readers should pay careful attention about what he wrote: “… you can’t fail to sense that the ruling politicians are scarcely interested in engaging the input of the public or, perhaps more accurately, the various publics on how both the nation of Trinidad and Tobago and the island of Tobago is being or should be governed. If you criticise them on their adjustment policies, they will ignore you, or bristle at your impertinence, or give you a begrudging moment in the sun.

“No doubt they are carried away by the ingrained canard (untruth) that they are in charge and so are not bound to listen to … the now-frustrated voices that elected them ...” I also go back several years to the 1970 Black Power revolution when we were grappling with our newly declared independence.

Coming out of that experience the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) prepared the People’s Declaration of Policy for the Development of a New Trinidad and Tobago (Blue Book). It was published in time for the 1981 general election.

In the Blue Book the party said that “…representative institutions must be subordinate to and serve institutions of direct people’s participation, an arrangement which would in fact make the people collectively, the national executive, and their chosen representative’s servants of the people.

Furthermore, the Blue Book carried this statement, “Offering the people a complete format of preconceived procedures, rules and regulations as a people’s institution will not work. The psychological bind of man to institution comes when there is involvement in the process of creating the institution.

It is over time, by constant observation, assessment and development that it will become possible to formalise the structures of people’s institutions.

What is vital is that the principle of people’s power remains the guide in the building of the institutions.” That whole concept is part of the legacy left by the late Chief Servant Makandal Daaga. When he spoke on the night of April 21, 2010, just after the Fyzabad Declaration was signed, he asked the assembled people to shout in unison, “I am the government.” The Chief Servant did so to emphasise that the people in TT must not be passive but should participate creatively in national affairs.

Blocking roads with burning rubbish and picket lines in front of schools are hardly enough to guarantee participation.

Former prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar repeated on many occasions what Daaga had said but time and the requisite will power did not allow the message to sink in. So we are back to square one.

Neither the People’s Partnership (other than NJAC) nor the PNM has had a clue about making people feel that they are really the power in this land.

The disconnect will continue for a very long time until there is popular involvement in the process of creating the institutions that will guarantee real people’s participation.

And that will not happen unless the leadership of the country is prepared to become midwives to the process.

AIYEGORO OME Mt Lambert