Escape is less about opportunity and ability than it is about drive, although chance and skill are prerequisites. The bedevilling feature of our political culture, which we have so far been unable to overcome or even recognise, is the cherished habit of refusing division on the basis of ideas and the weight of evidence that is ranked by relevance.

Politics is, among other things, a systematic way of ranking priorities. We do what we think will work in our favour or at least reduce our odds of losing out. This means that much of politics is also about threat recognition. If we perceive that the best way to decide what is and what is not a threat is through ’group-think’’, then we do not need to rely on ideas. In a way, group affiliation makes our minds up for us. This happens without us even noticing because it is ingrained and that makes it is a feature of culture.

What does that mean? Whether we voted for the COP, the UNC-A or the PNM in the November 2007 general election as a body of citizens we weren’t really concerned with the ideas underlying the political behaviour and policy proposals pushed by the major parties. Witness the feting. What is the core distinction to be made between the UNC-A and the COP for example? Traits maybe, but not ideas. Nothing in the UNC-A’s party documents is intellectually startling. And nothing in the COP’s party documents can be distinguished from the most neutered offerings of the UNC-A.

How can we judge the distinction between rivals for political power whose core ideas are mostly indistinguishable? All modern problems are complex, nuanced and subject to event cascades. If one party prefers a particular economic plan, how will we know? The UNC formed the government after the 17-17-2 election result in 1995 and Brian Kuei Tung was handed the portfolio of Minister of Finance. One of his first acts was to attend a breakfast meeting with the Chamber of Industry and Commerce specifically and explicitly to assure the businessmen that under the UNC there would be no shift in economic policy.

Now, what is the UNC in 1995 if not the fully flowered version of CLUB 88 which broke with the NAR while that party held office specifically to distinguish its own political position? In other words, in 1988 Panday & Co disagreed with the NAR and walked out - they said - on the grounds that Robinson & Co were increasing hardships for the working class and leading the country in the wrong direction. But what is a determination of wrong direction based on if not some compendium of ideas constituting the right one?

When the PNM returned to power in 1991 Wendell Mottley, Manning’s choice as Finance Minister, declared that the economic regime of the NAR was the only realistic path. In other words, when Kuei Tung afterwards said there will be no shift in economic policy under the UNC, Basdeo Panday had gone back home to NAR economics. It’s pathetic and immoral for leaders in Caroni and Naparima not to have noticed this, but there is an explanation: Preoccupations of ethnicity won out over intelligence.

Had the UNC taken the trouble to make even a cursory survey of itself regarding economic ideas and made some conscious choice to sponsor public debate, it is almost certain that political bacchanal would have done them less harm because the party would have been more fully engaged in purposeful policy prescription and national management.  

And yet it is not as if the UNC didn’t try. The infamous and (rightly) much maligned green paper on the media was in some ways their finest moment. The idea behind the document was rubbish but, for once, an administration took the chance to try and persuade the public and was fully engaged by that process. The difficulty arose chiefly from the strangeness of the enterprise. Citizens were simply not expecting an opening to engage the administration and plenty of pent-up mistrust came rushing out; and the UNC itself simply didn’t anticipate that possibility and weren’t prepared.  

BPM (Before Patrick Manning) it could reasonably be said that the PNM was, in part, a party of ideas. However judged, Dr Eric Williams was an academic and a crafty politician who somehow managed to surround himself with useful minds during the time he founded the PNM. Two examples come to mind - Beryl McBernie and CLR James. That he discarded them later we can put down to his political inadequacy, ie, his appetite for one-man-rule. Ironically, this seems to be Williams’s chief legacy and the main lesson drawn from his life by Patrick Manning. When Manning saw Morris Marshall, who vexed him, he certainly asked himself, what would Williams do? But when Manning sees Keith Rowley, he no longer has to pose that question.

Michael Harris, in his Express column of October 20 proposed three principles of the PNM which, in his view, account for decline. These are: paramountcy of the leader; the party speaks with one voice; the party stands alone

Harris says, ’these three principles effectively meant that there could never be any open politics within the party... in the realm of ideas and policies.’’ But why should he say this?

Manning’s PNM is the major intellectual morgue in the country. There is no room to table and examine fresh ideas and new information because the opinion of the Prime Minister and political leader dominates all discussion (even the secret ones hinted at by Ryan and also Harris) and decision-making.

Everyone in the PNM is preoccupied with the question - ’What would Manning want?’’ Additionally, for a long time, the party has been bereft of talent which is self-propelled by either curiosity or scepticism and willing, even eager, to seek out new paradigms. In other words, no one in the PNM has the means or the skills to escape. If this is so, and yet the country requires urgent fixing, hasn’t Harris implied that the other major outfit can be reformed?

- Novack George is a technologist with a

background in IT administration, politics and the performing arts