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The late Basdeo Panday, former prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, came to the funeral of Cheddi Jagan in 1997, and I was delegated to accompany him during his stay. Not ten minutes into our ride from Timehri to Georgetown, he opined that there should be shared governance in Trinidad and Tobago (TT) between the representatives of the Indians and Africans if the country was to prosper as it should (‘Two thieves make God laugh:’ SN, 01/04/2020). In those days I still held the position that the Westminster-type system required a very strong opposition, so quite a good discourse took place for most the remainder of the journey.
I wrote the above article in response to a slew of comments, but particularly that coming from former president Donald Ramotar, who invited us to ‘Take Trinidad & Tobago for instance, that country’s demographics closely approximate ours, but those questions (power sharing) never arise there. … Guyana is not the only multi-ethnic society … None of which have the same problem created as in Guyana by the PNC/APNU.’ Donald was mistaken on all counts. Guyana is a special kind of multiethnic society: it is a bicommunal one whose entire modern history has been one of political conflict between the representatives of two almost equal ethnic groups. Everywhere that this has been the case the democratic solution has had to be the replacement of the winner-take-all political system with a shared governance regime.
That aside, I concluded the above article by surmising that Panday might have been in mood he was having just (November 1995) come out of a bruising ethnic electoral battle that had ended in a 17 seats tie between his largely Indian supported United National Congress (UNC) and the People’s National Movement (PNM). He was only able to become prime minister with the help of the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) which had won 2 seats in the African dominated Tobago.
In a recent article ‘Panday never gave up on multiracial politics’ (SN: 07/01/2024) to solidify Indians vote for the PPP, Mr. Ravi Dev subtly set about stoking the ethnic fire by presenting Indians in the Caribbean as being the victims of African political prejudice! The TT media stated that Panday was the first Indian and first Hindu to earn the honour of becoming prime minister and Dev concluded: ‘therein lies the challenge in the Caribbean for individuals from groups other than descendants of enslaved Africans to represent or be represented in the governance of the countries where their forbears arrived as indentured labourers.’ They are still regarded as ‘exceptions’ and frequently as a ‘problem’. ‘The challenge becomes acute in the southern Caribbean where People of Indian Origin form a plurality in Guyana, Trinidad, and Suriname.’
Firstly, outside of the Southern Caribbean, where else in the Commonwealth Caribbean were/are Indians of sufficient numbers to take government or even become a competitive political challenge for them to have become an ‘exception’ a la Panday? Secondly, the Panday ‘exception’ in 1995 was a result of the 2 seats coming from the African dominated Tobago.
Most briefly, a Tobagonian, ANR Robinson, became Prime Minister when the NAR won the elections of 1986 but austerity measures and infighting over posts led to defections and Panday being expelled from the NAR in 1988. Panday then formed the Indian-dominated UNC and the NAR, with Robinson as leader, was defeated in the 1991 general elections, winning only two seats in Tobago. Robinson resigned as leader and efforts were made to rebuild the party but the UNC, like the PPP today, adopted a policy of attracting NAR supporters directly and failed. Robinson was persuaded to return and resume leadership of the NAR for the 1995 elections, but the party only retained its two seats in Tobago. The PNM and UNC tied at 17 seats but the former won the majority of the popular votes, and it was Robinson’s African seats from that made Panday the ‘exception.’
The calypsonians did not spare Robinson for his choice of Panday. But when in 2001, the UNC and PNM again tied with 18 seats each and Robinson, now president, offered the government to the PNM, Dev, conveniently forgetting the above wrote: ‘By then, ANR Robinson was president, after being nominated by Panday, but he chose the PNM’s Patrick Manning as PM even though the PNM had less popular votes!’ Some say that Robinson only supported Panday as a quid pro quo for the former promising to nominate him to be the first president of TT, and according to David Hinds, Robinson responded to concerns about his choice by stating that it resulted from his ‘moral and spiritual values’! All of this is more suggestive of political maneuverings than racism.
Thirdly, as Dev recognised, in none of the three countries of the Eastern Caribbean do Indians numerically dominate the political process as Africans do in all the other countries. They are only a plurality: in Guyana they are 40%, Suriname 27% and TT 37%. When Indians were the majority, their party – the PPP – did rule from 1957 to 1964 and the difficulties they confronted then were not orchestrated by Africans. Once the West became convinced that the PPP was a Soviet-type communist party dedicated to furthering the global proletariat revolution, all manner of undemocratic machinations were used to wrench it from government in the era of the containment of communism.
Fourthly, in the context of a competitive political environment, why should Indians not have problems attempting to become the chief executive in their ethnically plural political spaces? Africans, particularly in Guyana and TT, can similarly claim that where Indians are in a plurality, they have been facing similar political problems. As Dev noted, TT’s first prime minister, the formidable thinker, Eric Williams, referred to them as a ‘reluctant minority’. Dr. Hinds stated that on two occasions, years apart, he witnessed two different professional Africans in tears when the Indian-supported political party won government in TT. I recall witnessing an Indian professional in tears when after Cheddi Jagan died and Sam Hinds became president for that short time in 1997.
The problem is not principally with Africans and Indians and their cultures but even if it was, I would argue that one should seek to change what is possible in a timely manner, and very few would seek to deny that the system of governance is a major obstacle. That said, the foundation of the conflict is to be found in the ethnic numerical configurations and the inappropriate nature of the political system in these countries. The Westminster system these countries inherited from the British is designed for homogenous/dominant ethnic countries like the other countries in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Had TT gone through the era of containment of communism and the level of animosity it generated as did Guyana, its conflictual ethnic situation would most likely have been worse than it is today.
The system does not fit where large ethnic groups are struggling for political authority. Having been politically weaned in the European rather that the British winner-takes-all political culture, multiethnic but not bicommunal, Suriname still has checks on how power is won and exercised For example, one’s party must win 2/3 of the seats in parliament to become president and pass national budgets. Thus, notwithstanding its radical military/political history, on the 2023 V-Dem Democratic indices I provided last week, in terms of democratic governance it is far better placed than Guyana and more like the remainder of the Caribbean on every single index. Indeed, overall it is rated at number 42 in the world, Guyana is twice as bad – so to speak – at 84!
The mere fact that in government with a substantial history of ethnic political maneuverings Prime Minister Basdeo Panday articulated the need for shared governance in TT meant that he was indeed, as Dev stated, committed to multiethnic politics. However, the kind of multiethnicity he became committed to significantly differentiates him from the PPP and suggests that unlike the latter he had a greater interest in the development of his country rather than merely winning and keeping political office. Perhaps, unlike the PPP, he also understood that his government’s very slim majority still left the traditional representatives of a substantial Africans group out of political decision-making process and a la Sir Arthur Lewis, he thought this to be optimally unworkable and morally indefensible.