Round Table with Oscar
October 8, 2013

Social and political change coming to come in SVG

Social and political change is coming to come in SVG. It is unstoppable and to many it is invisible. Now that combination should make pause, a change we cannot see coming, but we cannot stop it from coming. Is there some magic in it? Actually no. The unstoppable change is the removal from office, or the loss of “power” of the ULP administration. That is both inevitable and expected. The invisible fact of the change and the more substantial change is what will come after. There are two reasons why we cannot see their change. The first one is this: we are looking in the wrong direction, facing backwards. The second reason or causes of our blindness is this: the people who will make this fundamental change are mostly still in the socio political womb.{{more}} They are coming to come, and I’ll give you a hint; they are not party apparatchiks.

COMING GENERAL ELECTIONS

The general elections that will take place within the next year and a half will be hot. That is normal. The political parties will spend millions; they will bring music for us and fill our eyeballs with antics. Then, they will describe the SVG that they want us to vote for, and to vote against. They will keep their votes and they will lose their credibility. This will be the last elections of this kind where political party bosses and their sponsors call the shots. The present brand of party politics is not working for us. As we listen to the weary rhetorical rhyme, and even dance to it. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? It just does not meet our material needs for a sustainable, decent and fulfilling life. Finally, in the depths of our intelligence and consciences, we are ashamed to be playing that game and we are looking for a way out. And so the “2015” general election is shaping up to become a political turning point, the prologue of raising of citizen politics and non-partisan policy development. Citizens will no longer cower at lawlessness and corruption, but start to seek a way out. The first step will be to dethrone the complacent ULP to install the interim NDP and to resolve not to sit anymore under a five-year bandwagon in the Vincy Wrestlemania network, social political change is coming to come next election.

FACING FORWARD

In a two or multi-party democracy, the vision of the community gets fixed backwards. When the Republicans win, people think that progress will come when they swing back to the Democrats. That is the trap of facing backward. In the change that is coming to come in SVG, we must break the bond of facing back. We cannot move forward while facing backward. Removing the ULP administration does not mean going back to the NDP. Rather it means going forward through the NDP to a new social and political formation in SVG. The term of office of the NDP is to be a period of social and political growth, a transition towards a united, inclusive, SVG where policy is not a party diktat, where employment is not a favour and where opinion is not a privilege to be enjoyed by the few independents. The ULP was unable and unfit to build such a united, inclusive SVG. The NDP is unready to build it; backward looking democracy cannot do it for us. That is why a coming to come democracy relies on new visioning, new creative forces, looked down by backwardness, to burst out of the social political womb and painfully, innovatively, caringly and firmly give guidance, in the past election transition, to a new Vincentian spring of action, mobilisation, re-education and national consensus?

No, and Yes, Yes, and No. We cannot start this democratic transition without more democratic space when the ULP is removed, and the NDP is not consolidated in its partisan policy. That change is the first step. No, it is not a commitment to NDP politics, but to past, or non NDP/ULP democracy. Yes, we must grapple with this vision of a just and fair and material Vincy democracy that is in the womb. Yes, we can roll out the carpet now to welcome and become the founder of the coming SVG, where leaders do not boss the rest, where workers have no fear of bosses, where enterprise is encouraged, where youth is full of hope, where nature, culture builds national pride, where love, courtesy and faith thrive abundantly.