Still Masters of Little Things

09 Oct, 2000
By Bukka Rennie

MAKING a big hullabaloo about paving roads, erecting and repairing bridges, refurbishing police stations and health offices, cramming children unscientifically into buildings, even over rumshops, and declaring that to be "universal education" are certainly not the hallmarks of statesmen and stateswomen. Indeed, such plebeian pleasures are the distinguishing features of cheap, ordinary politicians looking for a quick fix with which to bamboozle people and dull their human faculties in order to get votes.

Imagine, suddenly "performance" in central governance is merely about the maintenance and extending of social amenities. And it is only because people in their respective communities are not yet organised to deal with their everyday necessities why such ordinary affairs can be made by Cabinet Ministers to assume such political significance.

It seems as though "politics" today has been reduced to being a question of the "mastering of little things". Kamla is quite right, little things, like the issue of Mr Bissessar's pipe, are being blown out of proportion and mountains are being made of molehills. But she is the victim of her party's own penchant for the nonsense that has come to be presented and passed off in this country as "politics".

Where is the vision, we keeping asking, that can serve to fire people's imagination and unite them on the basis of a programme of social development for the country as a whole? Where are the five-year, 10-year, or 20-year Development Plans with a coherent fundamental vision relative to how we see ourselves in context of this present world and this Caribbean region? This is what people are hoping to hear and see.

In my view there are three constituencies that serve to profile our entire country: the East/West Corridor, Caroni and Tobago. What are the powers-that-be proposing to the people of the Corridor other than attempting to foist on them a regime of con-artists, hustlers, smart-men and parvenus who believe in nothing save and except their own capacity to wield and deal?

The Corridor comprises a social milieu of urban, worldly, consciousness, largely of landless clerks, professionals and white and blue-collared workers, artisans and petty-entrepreneurs who normally own nothing but their labour power, their stock-in-trade and probably the shelter over their heads, together with a youthful strata of unemployeds and under-employeds, powerful in both the mainstream and counter cultural expressions. Among them you can find existing every anti-establishment modern political tendency and ideological line. They are not people who can be easily trifled with, and they have been turned off from local politics since the late '60s.

Only 30 per cent of the electorate in this social milieu usually bothers to vote in elections since they are yet to be addressed in terms of modern politics. In this milieu can be included the towns of San Fernando, Fyzabad and Point Fortin.

And what are they proposing to Caroni and Tobago? Will they talk to Caroni only of religious solidarity and militancy? Or will they seriously address the issues relevant to the sugar industry, including the rum stocks, both from the point of view of workers and farmers?

This is a milieu in which the general consciousness is still in the throes of being transformed from that of the conservative, land-based worker-farmer, small shopkeeper, commercial types, to the consciousness of modern agrarian/industrial/ service functionaries and professionals. Now that this milieu has finally been able to identify with and taste the elixir of state power, what next shall be proposed to them in context of a 21st century world?

And in Tobago, where there has been for years a land-based "gentry" and peasantry with a middle strata of small proprietors, there is, in terms of consciousness, a close affinity to Caroni but with the additional circumstance of separation by water and separation in terms of an accumulation of different histories.

It is not so much what they shall propose for Tobago, but what Tobago shall demarcate for itself when it puts "Trinidad", ie central government, to sit down. No smart-Aleck, tomfoolery shall suffice in regard to the Corridor, Caroni and Tobago. Only genuine statesmanship shall bring results. In June 1999, in a piece titled "Masters of Little Things", the following warning was implied:

"...The common politician is always easily identified by the limits and boundaries he places on the desires and demands of the masses of people. He always seems to feel that they are okay once their bellies are filled, their loins are active and there are clothes and shelter in whatever forms available. "The common politician panders to the basest requirements of the constituents. He plays on their emotions and builds his rallies and his platforms on their fears; their fears of being left behind, their fears of being unable to compete with the 'significant other' social group...

"Such a common politician is always quick to deliver, in fact he boasts about being so quick in accomplishments, he is Quick-Draw McGraw, because he is restrained by the fact that his enemy, time, is on his case and soon his period in office will be up for review. "He cannot countenance query and is uncomfortable with unsettling questions, so the freedom of the press and such unnecessary 'rights' must be stymied for the so-called greater good of getting little things done speedily.

"On the other hand, the statesman builds on dreams and visions, not fears. Such leadership demands changes in the way in which we see and do things. Nothing for the statesman is cast in stone. He understands the process of all social development and works assiduously to guarantee the greatest good to the greatest number.

"The statesman introduces programmes of activity, nurtured by time, and involves everybody in the broadest possible democratic institutions, and builds the infrastructure based on the equitable distribution of resources to guarantee undying love and respect. The statesman is never in a hurry. "We are tired of the Quick-Draw McGraws and the masters of little things..." For what else will they ever be able to speak about other than issues like Mr Bissessar's pipe. Small things will always amuse and engage small minds.

The End