Whither goeth our democracy? – Part Five

by Oswald Fereira

I left St Vincent in 1967 to embark on my university education. I returned in 1972 for a short sojourn, then left permanently in 1975. I have not followed SVG politics post 1975, so the Mitchell years are just a blip on my radar. I started to follow SVG politics post 2010, but from a distance, depending largely on what I see and read in the media. So, there will be gaps in this comparison, but I will try my best.{{more}}

The 1960s saw the beginning of the polarization of the populace around two dominant parties, the PPP and the SVLP. There has never been a successful third party to act as a balance, so the populace was generally divided down the middle. Many elections in the 1960s were won by one seat, five to four, and sometimes the party that won the majority of seats did not win the majority of the votes cast. This led to discontent and a malaise that festered from election to election. This was the era of famous crossings of the floor with the resulting change in government. For example, Herman Fraser Young left the ranks of the SVLP to join Pappie Joshua and the PPP and forever earned the name Herman “Traitor” Young. Papa Levi Latham left the ranks of the PPP to join the SVLP and was accepted as a hero.

In 2010 and again in 2015, subject to matters before the Courts, we have two successive elections won by eight seats to seven and the extreme polarization of the populace. The result of the 2015 election could not be worse for either the ULP or the NDP. The NDP found itself on the short end of an eight to seven seat decision for the second consecutive election and suffered a decline in the popular vote. The ULP found that except for the disputed Leeward seat, all its support is on the Windward side of the island and the NDP inherited the Leeward, Kingstown and the Grenadines. For the NDP, two of the Leeward seats were won by the slimmest of margins. For either party this polar split is nothing short of terrible. For the NDP there is a further issue, should they get a favourable ruling in the Court and end up with eight seats, they will have the absolute right to govern, but as they will not have the majority of the votes cast, they would have a moral dilemma.

In the 1950s and 1960s intolerance for the opposing view was prevalent and built up election after election. Today, this polarization has reached a new height and intolerance of the opposing view still prevails. The division is so intense, it is now an abyss that may now be impassable, a rift that may be beyond healing. If it is allowed to fester and build up more, the nation could end up in a civil war, in which the weaponry would be more than just bottles, stones and cutlasses and the toll on the population could be severe. You can only taunt and insult others for so long before a breaking point is reached. To quote the great Mahatma Ghandi: “Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.”

The 1960s saw the growth of political graffiti, with party symbols being plastered across the country and party symbols and colours being flaunted. Today this political graffiti has reached new heights. With graffiti from the 2010 election still around, the media reports a total environmental degradation across the country and at Sion Hill, in particular; and whenever I saw pictures, I often saw a sea of red or yellow at political gatherings.

In the 1960’s the distribution of goods in exchange for votes was prevalent. Today, there are allegations in the media that this practice is still occurring. In the Searchlight of December 4, 2015, Adrian Fraser wrote that many disgusting things are happening,’ worst is the distribution of lumber, cement and galvanize. In the 1950s and 1960s, political opponents were seen as mortal enemies. We saw that Joshua followed Comrade Charles to the Central Windward constituency, in an effort not only to defeat, but vanquish him, and he succeeded. Today, we still have that bitter rivalry and fight to the death attitude between the ULP and the NDP. We seem to believe that the other candidates that run against us are mortal enemies, who must not only be conquered, but vanquished in the process. We have not accepted the mantra that in a true democracy, the struggle between political parties and their candidates is not a fight for survival, but rather a competition to serve the people. It should not be viewed as a fight to the death.

In the 1950s and 1960s, we saw political dynasties being established. Joshua was the first and long standing leader of the PPP and he became the party so much so that when he died the PPP faded out of existence. Cato was the first and long-standing leader of the SVLP. Although not as dominant a leader as Joshua, when he handed over the reins of the party it was not the same and although it fused into the ULP, the ULP is certainly not the party of Cato. Today we see the ULP with a strong, long-standing leader, who is becoming the party and who has established a dynasty of four successive election wins. We see the NDP with a long-standing leader who has headed the party through four election campaigns.

The 1960s saw the development of a fanatical relationship between a party and a leader with little attention being paid to any ideology. One would have expected that the SVLP, being the “Labour” Party, would be the party that had the big shows in Kingstown on Labour Day, May 1, but it was the PPP who had hjacked Labour Day from the SVLP and held the big demonstrations in Kingstown. Yes, the PPP and the SVLP had published manifestos, but once in office it was hard to detect any change in direction from one party to the other, as the mode of government changed little, except which constituency was looked after and which was punished. Life went on and so did the government, depending on whatever grant-in-aid projects they got funded. Most people had no idea why they were supporting one party over the other. As a teenager, I heard villagers saying “if Pappie Joshua dress up ah broomstick and run um ‘gainst Cato, me ah go vote fuh de broomstick”. Such was the blind allegiance, more religion, than politics. The NDP claims to be a conservative party, while the ULP claims to be social democrat. The poor economic situation may force an NDP government to support social programmes, rather than leave economic development to the private sector, thereby blurring any ideological difference between the parties, just as it did in the days of the PPP and the SVLP.

Today, the allegiance to political parties is still fanatic. The parties have full control over our daily lives and we follow our party of choice like mindless robots and docile sheep. In one 2015 year end editorial the observation was that the political divisions are now deeper and wider than ever. The stated hope was that the country could return to some sense of normalcy, in which every action or utterance by an individual is not perceived through red or yellow tinted glasses. It further commented that the political divisions in SVG have existed for so long that normal in our society is that a person’s political affiliation is the first consideration. The people of SVG are political animals who live and breathe politics daily. As a result, there is no possibility of a cool down between elections and the heat of the discontent between the two dominant political factions gets hotter election after election. It is an unhealthy existence. Case in point was the Lynch funeral in Georgetown, where a solemn ceremony became a political football and the House of the Lord was made into a political battleground. If we had political cooling off, saner heads may have prevailed. If the Prime Minister insisted on speaking at the funeral, he could have been sent a message in polite fashion. Nothing hurts a politician more than having an audience walk away from him. Those who were opposed to him speaking could have simply got up and walked out of the church in silence, leaving him with no audience. By making a point in our customary hot-headed way, we gave him an audience and media attention probably far beyond his expectation. We reacted the only way we seem to know, by trying to shout him down. In the process, we showed disrespect for the deceased and his family and for the sanctity of the church. We may have thought that the bad publicity would be a liability to the Prime Minister, but in some cases, bad publicity often turns out to be better than no publicity at all and he probably had the proverbial last laugh.

The political realities between the 1950s/1960s and today are comparable, except that today things have intensified. This leads me to deduce that the years between 1970 and 2000 were probably no different and that there has been a gradual build up from the 1950s to the situation we have today. We did have the Mitchell dynasty as well. We did have a foray of new blood and attempts at new political parties, but they all collapsed and we ended up with the familiar two-party divide, with a nation divided more than it has ever been.

In the next article in Weekend Searchlight on Friday, February 26, I will start a discourse on where do we go from here.