THOUGH I’D MEANT to finish the 11-Plus today – three Mondays ago, I did the maths section of a practice paper and, last week, the “Language Arts”– I’m putting off my 51-Plus exam until next week, for two reasons: one, I’d like to use the essay choices from this year’s actual 11-Plus, and getting the paper is proving harder than electing a Guyanese leader of the DLP; and, two, Trinidad and Tobago’s voters go to the polls today and I’m wondering what they might come back with.Unlike Barbados, which has a long history of self-determination (even if the process was limited, for centuries, to a handful of racists), Trinidad, the original Crown Colony, has only known what the late Lloyd Best called, “Maximum Leadership”. Constitutionally, the Trinidadian prime minister directly or indirectly controls crucial state offices. Again, under their own constitutions, the political leaders of the People’s National Movement and the United National Congress personally determine everything from who leads the Youth Arm to who is chosen as a candidate. Patrick Manning once peremptorily rejected a candidate endorsed enthusiastically by the screening committee and Manning himself because the candidate chanced to mention he was agnostic, and Born Again Manning would not tolerate a Doubting Thomas.Trinidad does not have leaders, but rulers. When the big man talks, no jackass brays – as Trinidad’s first prime minister, Dr Eric Williams, once declared. Trinis elect a Maximum Leader – and then spend every moment until he is replaced by another one complaining that he has too much power.Nothing that happens today in Trinidad & Tobago will change that. Whether Mr Manning is given a comeback or a comeuppance, Trinidad and Tobago itself will spin further and deeper into chaos – because no real leader will stand up. Three times, in the last six weeks, individuals could have chosen real leadership over the “Maximum” version and didn’t. If Mr Manning were a real leader, he would have faced and defeated (or abided by the result of) the No Confidence vote; instead, he called an election midway through his term; but one expected that of a confirmed Maximum Leader. Sadly, for the little aspiring country, both Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Keith Rowley failed to see the opportunity to bypass the old regime and speak directly to a people crying out for genuine leadership. Elections in T&T are not about the direction the country moves in, but about who moves into the Great House. Trinis do not recognise real leadership; and Trinidad may be incapable of producing it.So I respectfully suggest that the Hon Owen Arthur, leader of what strikes me as the most successful Government of Barbados, move to Trinidad under the CSME and give Trinis & ‘Bagoans their first real leader since Independence. He would be as much a boon to TT as he might be a bane to BLP leader, Mia Mottley; and Trinidad might see that it can, like Barbados, chart its own course, and may opt for a course which will, if we have any luck at all, bring us all in these half-mad little islands together as the one people we could be.
• BC Pires is coming round the wicket
