Trinidad:Black Power After 40 Years

The Trinidad and Tobago general election appears to have passed without any violence and a new government has gained the numbers to replace the old government. Patrick Manning leaves and in steps Kamla Persad-Bissessar: Trinidad and Tobago’s first female Prime Minister. From my temporary base in the PNM stronghold of Diego Martin, I watched with amazement at the excitement the elections seemed to generate. The weekend leading up to the election saw a series of events held by all the parties and all seemed to be attended by gung-ho supporters of all ages. I tried to think of when I last saw anything like this in Guyana, Jamaica, elsewhere, even the USA. With the election of Barack Obama we did see some unusual enthusiasm but still turnout hovered in the mid 50s, percent: The highest turnout since 1968. The average between midterm and presidential elections shows less than half the people eligible to vote in the US actually vote. So it was strange in a good way to see the red and the yellow of the two major parties in Trinidad, and smaller parties' colors too, proudly displayed by supporters. Reports say 69 percent of voters cast their ballot in Trinidad on May 24, 2010.

 

Unlike the usual 2 party face-off in the US, this is touted as a victory by the coalition of several small parties including one led by former Black Power leader, Geddes Granger: now named Makandal Daaga. It was Makandal Daaga’s NJAC, in 1970, which led a Black Power march to the Indian stronghold, Caroni, with a banner that exhorted Indians and Africans to unite. Unity may not have been fully achieved then, but some observers, see the unity now. The UNC led by Kamla Persad Bissessar is seen as predominantly Indian, but saw the importance of coalition building to defeat the incumbent government. More importantly the small members of the coalition saw something in Mrs. Persad-Bissessar they were willing to trust in a way that had not happened in Trinidad, perhaps, ever.  Perhaps, it’s the exhortations of Walter Rodney in “Groundings with My Brothers” that has finally taken shape and propelled a party that courts multi-racialism. In that book Rodney expanded Black Power to include Indians. His ideas influenced Indians and Africans of that period.The cry of ‘people’s power’ is now ‘People’s Partnership’.

I took a trip past Chaguanas and Couva to Claxton Bay. These are strong UNC areas and they did not disappoint with loud sound-systems they traversed the constituent with the word and matched anything in Diego. Most Trinidadians, I asked, knew the writing was on the wall for PNM. But that did not dim the rallies for either party. But one wonders why it is that this democratic process, here, enlists such high enthusiasm. Isn’t it that we already know that the problems are too complex to be solved by just changing the majority party in parliament? If this is so are we asking for a change in the majority party or is it something else?

So I can more easily communicate with my hosts, I presented my Digicel phone at the Digicel counter at Piarco Airport with the aim of buying a Sim card and some ‘credit’. After much hemming and hawing, I was told by the Digicel employee, that the Digicel phone I bought in Guyana can not work in Trinidad. This is the same Digicel phone I had used in Jamaica and planned to use in every Caribbean country. The reason they gave was that the phone’s frequency was different from that used in Trinidad. This may seem a small matter, but how does one buy a phone in one Caricom country and not be able to use it in another because of the difference in frequency even when the seller of the phone is the same company in each case.

It seems Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar that your work is cut out for you. You must address this phone situation. We long for the one family of the Caribbean as Caricom languishes on its knees. One family is the way we envision the Caribbean with Digicel only as a symbol of what’s still wrong. But Digicel seems unaware of this need for coalition and happens to be the main sponsor for our Caribbean cricket team and more. Hhmmm.