Dear Editor,
For a decade or so the country has been governed by a minority or a wafer-thin majority. This balance of power looks set to endure, though the incumbent may change (as we have just witnessed). Those in charge (on both sides of the political spectrum) appear not to have absorbed the significance of this trend: they are the precariat, their hold on power precarious at best. Each administration continues to govern as though in possession of an impregnable majority, with no need to compromise or to consult. Is this a sign of our political immaturity or some form of misplaced arrogance?
At any one time, roughly half of the population harbours deep doubts and reservations about our leaders. This requires a mature form of governance that is genuine not gestural. Appointments drawing from a wider pool than the ruling party’s immediate supporters go some way to mitigating this lack of trust. Whimsical and opaque hirings and firings do not.
There is more to democracy than a ballot and a box. There is more to democracy than a well-written constitution. Without transparency, without due process, we have only a democracy on paper, rather than a democracy in practice. For as long as public officials continue to be appointed and removed without transparency and without due process, we are still, all, in thrall to the ingrained habits of patronage and cronyism redolent of Martin Carter’s ‘Plantation – feudal coast!’
It is time, it is long past time, to move on.
Yours faithfully,
Isabelle de Caires