Gabrielle Jamela Hosein is a feminist, activist, poet and Lecturer at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.
If an election were to be called today in Trinidad and Tobago, it is hard to say quite what would happen. Moments like this, of political flux and shift are too few and far between. Nonetheless, they signal opportunities and openings not to be missed.
First, we should pay attention to the election of Mrs. Kamla Persad-Bissessar to the post of party leader of the United National Congress (UNC). Kamla fought a brilliant campaign that both played and deflected the ‘gender question’. Well-funded, media savvy and extremely populist, the campaign managed to side step long-time party leader Basdeo Panday’s snide swipes at her character.
When a sexist campaign was obviously targeted at her, she said that she spoke as a politician, but also as a grandmother, sister and mother, and that ‘goonda’ and ‘caveman’ politics would not intimidate her. Kamla’s campaign explicitly refused to make nasty comments about those in the competing slate of candidates and refused to make them ‘enemies’ for the sake of the hustings. In so doing, she championed a ‘politics of love’ instead of one of ‘war’.
In the end, she won 13,493 to Panday’s 1,359 votes. Less than half the membership of the party voted in this internal party election. The votes cast also only reflected a fraction of those who voted for the party in the last general election. Yet, in scoring such a sweeping victory, she became the country’s first female party leader, cracked the glass ceiling in public life and avoided a patriarchal politics which seeks to win at all costs. Unexpectedly, her success also signalled an acceptance of gender equality among women and men of all generations and ethnicities. In many ways, her victory was one for Caribbean feminist movements, for women and especially Indian women, and for men and women who were willing to challenge the ‘maximum leader’ as much as they were willing to challenge traditional gender bias. Trinidad and Tobago has never seen an internal party election such as this nor has it had a woman at the helm of opposition politics. This is the first time that the United National Congress can seriously beat the governing People’s National Movement (PNM) at the polls since 1995.
Kamla’s greatest obstacle since her win has been Mr. Panday himself, as he stages daily temper tantrums to maintain his traditional authority and hold over the position of Leader of the Opposition. The next weeks are crucial for Mrs. Persad-Bissessar. She needs to secure the confidence of her parliamentary colleagues, remove Mr. Panday from his post and find a way to both pay her public respects and neutralise him at the same time. The only person hoping that the jhanjat continues is PNM party leader and Prime Minister Patrick Manning. Persad-Bissessar has publicly stated that she is on the campaign for the post of Prime Minister and she has a good chance of winning given that Mr. Manning’s popularity rating has slid below 15% over the past year.
Such is Kamla’s new-found glamour that a recent theatre production made a play-within-a-play joke about the show having a special guest coming to see the performance. On the stage, the cast guessed, was it Beyonce? No. Obama? No. Bigger than Obama? Kamla! In the end, the ‘big sawati’ coming to see the production was the Queen of England, but the script humorously made its political point. This is Kamla’s moment.
Like Mr. Panday, Mr. Manning is facing extreme internal dissent. Keith Rowley, the strongest PNM politician still left in the House of Parliament has been in the stickfighting ring with Mr. Manning over several years now. However, the ante has been upped by Mr. Rowley’s exposure of state sector corruption – including serious shortcomings in the awarding massive state contracts – by Manning’s grand vizier Calder Hart (executive chairman of the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago, Udecott, and other state agencies). In response, Mr. Manning has attempted to publicly discredit Mr. Rowley through means both unfair and foul. The blows they are now dealing each other are only about one thing: buss head.
Despite Mr. Manning’s schoolmarm warnings about discipline, Mr. Rowley voted against the government last week. He was right to do so. The government refused to debate the state’s response to the national water shortage and Mr. Rowley insisted they should. Bois! With Rowley to watch on his right and Kamla on his left, Mr. Manning is clearly worried. The PNM, a party in almost constant campaigning mode, has therefore stepped up its politicking. Mr. Manning is walking through constituencies and he has made the Minister of Sport apologise for wasting TT$2 million on a big national flag. Months ago, the Minister slapped down public outcry like a pesky mosquito. Some commentators wondered if this recent apology was an example of Obama-style politics, but it comes a little too late to be believed.
Mr. Manning’s problem is that he spends TT $50 billion a year and is widely considered to be a spendthrift. He has incurred a TT $13 billion dollar debt since coming to power in 2002 and has had to increase taxation. Given that he has played mas with citizens’ money, the nation can expect a great deal of spin in the next months as local government elections are expected for later in the year. Despite having a traditionally low turnout at the polls, this election will send signals about popular mood and its impact on a general election. Plying excuses of all kinds, the Manning government postponed the Local Government elections when they were due four years ago. They have never been held since although they are due every three years. The PNM will be seeking to flex its muscles at this election and begin to cash in on the loyalties of those voters who work in patronage jobs or received houses in marginal constituencies. The UNC will be looking to expand its base and will be forced to form an alliance with the Congress of the People (COP), a third party which cannot and should not be ignored. The COP is a breakaway from the UNC and it received about 23% of the vote in the 2007 general election. It now draws on a wider base than the UNC and the two parties will need to work together to successfully oust the PNM from power. The last power sharing arrangement collapsed disastrously in 1986. Still, this is 2010. With Mr. Panday put to pasture and Mr. Manning feverishly outing fires in his own house, Mrs. Persad-Bissessar has a historical juncture in her hands. She has the potential to usher in the kinder, cleaner ‘new politics’ being discussed since the late 1980s. If she manages to fight the kind of campaign that made her the first woman holding power over her party, she will certainly have my vote in the next general election. Given that a day is like a lifetime in politics, these are exciting times indeed.
