We inherited our constitutional system from the British. After all, the reasoning was, it had worked for them for the last thousand or so years and had been successfully transplanted around the world from Canada to India and everywhere in-between. It was therefore quite reasonable to assume that it would work for us. Reasonable, but it ignored one crucial element: race!
As I have said before, we are hopelessly divided by race with the African element of our population voting one way and the Indian element voting the other. Both sides ignore issues such as competence and who might actually have better programs until the one in power screws up so badly (or is perceived to screw up badly) that it is voted out. There was an experiment way back in 1986 when a political party, the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), purported to have all the answers and not be race based. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, not the least being the incompetence of its leaders, the NAR failed and in 1981 the country reverted once again to its comfort zone of race based politics.
Today this has so become the norm that it is almost impossible to find anyone who is not influenced by it. The PNM gets its funding from wealthy "nons" (non-black/non-Indian) and the UNC gets its funding from wealthy Indians. As the newspapers are owned by the nons you will find that generally speaking to a greater or lesser degree they tend to favour the PNM (although, to be fair, the Express more than the other two daily newspapers tends to to a more neutral line). The truth is that the UNC simply does not need the money from the "nons" who generally find that they are simply not needed. The PNM though, needs their cash quite badly.
And, no, I'm not advocating any type of press censorship. My own personal view is that a person ought to have complete freedom of choice in following whatever political path he/she believes to be the best for the country. Of course, this doesn't mean that I have to agree with him/her or say nothing about his/her beliefs. What is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander and while I reserve the right to change my mind on anything, I also reserve the absolute right to hold whatever opinions that I may have, so long as I do so honestly.
But we are talking about constitutional reform and how we might fix our very serious problem caused by the racial divisions in our society. In looking at it I have come to the conclusion that perhaps we ought to start with a blank sheet of paper. For example, we are a nation of some 1.4 million people. And yet, we have Regional Councils, District Councils. Town Councils, City Councils and even a Tobago House of Assembly with its own 'Secretaries' and Chief Secretary. Why? The Mayor of Miami, for crying out loud, presides over a larger population and a larger land area than we have. So? Why are we indulging in the expense of having all these Councils complete with all these 'wannabe' politicians clogging things up.
Perhaps, the first thing that we should do is to ask the simple question: why?
Next week I will set out my proposals for how I think we can solve the problems that we have. These last two posts have really been trying to set the ground for my proposals as well as to encourage my one or two readers to start thinking about how they would solve the problems. Because one thing is crystal clear: by continuing to ignore our problems we will never fix them.
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