Diary of a mothering worker. August 26, 2020.

Post 388.

New MP to the House, Vandana Mohit, shouldn’t have posted about covid19, the PNM and karma. She should also have been sensitive to the fact when you are an Indian woman making such statements about the PNM, those statements will be critiqued for their implicit targeting and alienating of Afro-Trinidadians/Tobagonians. Her use of religious language unmistakably played to Hindu nationalism, and her statement would have been received by a UNC base as politically deploying both racial and religious code. In such a tense post-election national context and at a time when mortality rates will rise, kuchoor was bound to result from such a message and its cheap political scoring.

That said, Senator Laurel Lezama-Lee-Sing also left my eyebrows raised. In response to then sitting PNM MP Maxie Cuffie’s atrocious and unrepentant framing of the UNC in terms of homicidal anti-blackness, with his reference to the party keeping the “knees of the UNC off our throats,” the PNM PRO’s entire response was, “The letter is under the hand of Mr Cuffie and therefore is not an official position of the People’s National Movement.” Nothing else came from the party, despite public backlash about its highly divisive and insulting contents. No apology, no recognition of hurt caused.

In comparison, Lezama-Lee Sing went to town on Mohit’s Facebook post, which was not an official position of the party, calling on her to “apologise to the nation for this nonsense, to recognise the error of her ways, and to commit…she will do better, that she will give more thought before spewing hatred and discord.” She continued, “The oath to which she will subscribe when Parliament convenes demands so much more…and we the people will accept nothing less.”

Both Mohit’s and Cuffie’s statements played on divisiveness and stoked a base. The response to them should not have rolled out a double standard, or impunity for one and blame for poor race relations on the other. It’s like playing a game you are pretending you are not playing, and we the people deserve better.

I think about this especially because Lezama-Lee Sing and Mohit are smart, articulate, hard-working, and ambitious young women with brilliant political lives ahead of them. By brilliant I don’t mean only in terms of their own career path, I mean in terms of their capacity as a younger generation less poisoned by the implicit biases entrenched in their political elders. I mean in terms of their potential to not just follow their parties’ bad habits, but to transform them.

These two, and the other young women (and young men) that are the bright stars of succession planning, hold our fate in their hands. Imagine if we could entrust them to not play the game so cynically and willingly, and rather play on their strengths and their genuine desire to see the country improve. They could usher in a shift from racial codes and logics that harm and dehumanise as part of normal political campaigning.

I admire both these young women. I want to see them, and others whose parliamentary record will emerge over these next five years, do well. Not simply on terms set by their parties, but on terms set by non-partisan hopes of “we the people.” Across race, class, dis/ability and sexuality, we need more of a generation willing to do better than those who came before so their transformational possibilities shine. Low voter turn-out and significant disillusion tell us this plainly. Mauvais langue cannot continue as our rallying go-to.

Thinking further about women in politics, I noted the PM’s swearing-in ceremony comments on August 19. Referring to Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly and Lisa Morris-Julian, Dr Rowley championed putting the nation’s children “in the hands of two mothers.” As Newsday quoted, “They are responsible now, not just for their own family, but the family of the children of TT.”

Motherhood requires an immense skill-set, which usually can never be cited on a resume, so it was intriguing to see it drawn into public life, and the nation cast as a matrifocal family; woman-headed though patriarchal.

But, Ashlee Burnett, young chair of the TT chapter of CIWiL, put it best, “The notion of linking women’s capabilities to serve by how well they can manage the home, not only reinforces a stereotype of traditional gender norms but it also takes away from the years of hard work and effort put into ensuring that they are both competent and the best for the job.”

The double-standard here again signals transformation much-needed by another generation.

 

Diary of a mothering worker. June 30, 2020.

Post 381.

As election season blows in, many of us, perhaps a growing number, continue to hope that political parties will fight a clean campaign. I think particularly of young people, voting and perhaps paying attention for the first time, and the example they will see. I think of the young women being trained by the Caribbean Institute for Women in Leadership (CIWiL) and their fears they have about the greater risks they face as future candidates when the fight for power gets dirty.

In hoping for a clean battle, ordinary citizens have a tool to hold parties to account. It is a Code of Ethical Political Conduct, first created in 2014 and revised last year in time for the Local Government election. The Code is available on the website, www.politicalethicstt.org, and provides a basis for complaints to a Council for Responsible Political Behaviour, comprising citizens and political parties.

I joined the Council last year, as a representative of the Network of NGOs of Trinidad and Tobago for the Advancement of Women, and have learned a lot since. The Code encourages peaceful, free and fair elections, tolerance and respect for human rights. It secures parties’ commitment to refrain from practices that promote divisiveness and violence. All political parties – including emerging and small ones – should be a signatory to the Code, which means that they agree to uphold the integrity of the electoral process in their own campaign and in that of their rivals.

This may sound like a lot of nice, but ineffectual words except they refer to real challenges we face. In the last weeks, we have seen personal attacks on candidates in San Juan/Barataria, allegations of biased hamper distribution in some constituencies, racially-opportunistic posturing by sitting MPs, and even months of instability in Guyana created by lack of electoral integrity. The goal is to stop descent into hate and violence through building consensus on some basic ethics to which we can all agree.

All over the world, codes such as these are used by citizens to report abuses of persons and power, and to argue that basic decency should not be collateral damage of politicians’ ground war. From a broader perspective, we should do whatever we can wherever we can to promote peace, for a more politically peaceful society is also one with greater peacefulness in communities and families.

The Council starts election monitoring three months prior to 5^th anniversary date of the last election, or three months before an election is normally considered due. It monitors political parties, candidates and supporters’ adherence to the code, often on the basis of citizens’ complaints of violation of the Code to the Council web page, or the email info@politicalethicstt.org.

I’ve been impressed and guided by the complaints that come in, which show how many citizens value fairness, are appalled by demeaning language and disgusted by corruption, and believe that candidates’ gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion should not be attacked or a basis for discrimination.  

The Code also prohibits use of rewards, such as money and groceries, to induce citizens to join a party, attend a public meeting or vote for a candidate. I wrote my PhD on, among other things, election campaigning in a marginal constituency in 2002, and I can tell you, with full certainty from over a year of fieldwork, that inducements were common practice then, particularly for a party in power with access to welfare and other resources.

Poor voters would be threatened with loss of CEPEP or URP jobs if they didn’t visibly campaign. Poor people are smarter than politicians though. For all of them would talk about wearing the shirt and waving the flag, before voting how they choose. In a sense, this is why political parties get desperate and resort to all kinds of shadowy strategies – particularly when it is a close call, as in this election, and when momentum builds to do anything you must to win.

The Code enables us to not simply be voters, but to informally govern the hustings and to assert the terms and conditions by which competing parties should abide. It gives us power during the campaign and not just at the ballot box. It says that ‘we the people’ are watching. The Council has no legal teeth, but ethical words and deeds should not have to be enforced with a heavy hand. They should be a symbol of all that a party stands for, and being regularly reminded of that expectation by a cross-section of citizens should suffice.