Rex Nettleford
THE PENSIONS provided for Commonwealth Caribbean Prime Ministers may not always prove adequate for everyone concerned and supplementary income by way of large advances of royalties for memoirs to be published are not guaranteed as is usually the case with counterparts in the metropole.
Returns on assets while in office are for ethical reasons conventionally not regarded as advisable and in some cases are not allowed. And even when such assets are held in escrow or discreetly transferred to the custodial care of relatives, questions turning on propriety are likely to be either asked on radio talk-shows and in rum-shops, or become the recurring topic of malicious verandah-talk.
However, the options left open to a Prime Minister between a vow of poverty and the pursuit of ill-gotten wealth is from any point of view quite unsatisfactory. It is, indeed, a feature of Westminster democracy that Prime Ministers can descend into conspicuous anonymity or even abject penury on leaving office a price many a future Caribbean prime ministerial hopeful may not wish to pay. Hankering after a United States presidential type of system may well be seen by a new generation as a way around such options, though the question arises whether countries of the region have the resources to support such a practice. In 1993 the United States was supporting five ex-Presidents and another in the White House out of the public eye.
TITLE OF OFFICE
Unlike their Unites States counterparts, Commonwealth Caribbean prime ministers do not carry their title of office to their graves, though a number of them, having been Her Majesty's Privy Councillors (i.e., in territories that remain monarchies in independence) enjoy the courtesy title of 'The Right Honourable' throughout their lifetime. Knighthoods and Dameships are added lifetime courtesies coming straight from Her Majesty, whether as Queen of Jamaica (as in the case of Sir Donald Sangster) or as Queen of England (as in the case of Sir Alexander Bustamante or Dame Eugenia Charles, so honoured while still the Prime Minister of the Republic of Dominica). The region is yet to work out suitable and universally satisfying ways of sustaining the acknowledge-ment of former incumbents of the office of final retirement. Jamaica Prime Ministers (past and present) now carry the title 'The Most Honourable'.
The retirement must indeed be 'final' since the Westminster system has no fixed-term provisions for a head of government. Politicians can constitutionally be Prime Ministers for as many times as they present themselves and are able to command a majority of loyal supporters in the elected chamber of the legislature.
Errol Barrow (Barbados), Vere Bird Sr., (Antigua) John Comptom, (St. Lucia), and Michael Manley, (Jamaica) were returned as Prime Ministers after losing elections to rival contenders. Presidents of the United States can go on for two consecutive four-year terms and no longer, though Franklin D. Roosevelt, due to the exigencies of war, was allowed a further term. That has not recurred since.
Prime Ministers need not aspire to saintly detachment when leadership requires walking the rugged landscape tenanted by ordinary mortals who must, in any case, legitimate the prime ministerial office and authority. If being tough and courageous means being flawed, it does not rule out being the idealistic, compassionate, open-minded and decent human beings leading figures are equally expected to be.
CLEAR VISION
If scholars given to perfection in their constructs expect of political leaders a totally clear vision, steadfast rectitude and a life of nothing but the 'truth', the mass of the population will frequently take into account the imperfectability of humankind, and get into perspective what may be clear signs of human failing considered normal among less exalted souls "Some flesh of anger, some hint of envy, regret, self doubt, some ill- considered remark, some gossip from a rival," as one Michael Kaufmaan thought normally to be found among great political leaders.
The "ill-considered remark" is virtually a staple in the political culture of a region which likes to boast of its strong "oral tradition". So Errol Barrow, as head of government, lost favour among Barbadian civil servants when he all but dismissed them as little more than "an army of occupation" in other words, a battalion holding the political directorate under the siege rather than being the support columns they are expected to be in winning the battles of public administration.
Prime Minister Eric Williams, who was never known to suffer fools gladly, imperiously advised his Trinidadian compatriots to "get the hell out of here" (meaning Trinidad and Tobago) if they did not like the actions of one of his ministers regarded by many to have been guilty of wanton abuse of power.
Prime Minister Michael Manley in a flash of anger, all but recommended the existing "five fights a day" to those of his countrymen and women who he felt preferred to flee to Florida rather than stay and help find the solutions for the problems confronting a changing Jamaica as part of a changing world in the challenging seventies. He, and his counterparts in the eastern Caribbean, were to be repeatedly reminded of their "remarks" for many a day following the angry outburst.
Before his death, President Burnham of Guyana was widely reported up and down the archipelago as expressing surprise that any "leader who is in power could lose an election". The remark invited widespread speculation over his Party not ever losing an election while he was in power. Worse still, the remark grated on the sensibility of those in the region who expect elections to be not only free and frequent but also fair.
History must naturally be allowed to judge those Caribbean political leaders who are still in the game at time of writing. Yet will no doubt be tempted to measure the achievements of an Edward Seaga or P.J. Patterson, A John Compton or a Eugenia Charles, an Erskine Sandiford or a Vere Bird Sr., a Cheddi Jagan or a Desmond Hoyte who have been the CEO's of countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean.
A well-known British parliamentarian (Enoch Powell) is reported as saying that "all political lives, unless they are cut off in mid-stream at a happy juncture, end in failure" Ignominious ejection from office is to be avoided at all costs is what is here implied. There is indeed danger in overstaying one's welcome. Julius Nyerere resigned from office while he was still President of Tanzania and so did Michael Manley (in 19991) and P.J. Patterson (2006) while still Prime Minister of Jamaica. Neither Churchill, deGaulle nor Margaret Thatcher was able to do this in 1965, 1969 and 1991 respectively. They each suffered a kind of humiliation in defeat despite their separate efforts to, and success at, rescuing their countries from an "overwhelming feeling of drift and despair", as a Times (of London) editorial in reference to Margaret Thatcher put it.
According to Baroness Thatcher, "being a prime minister is a lonely job". In a sense, it ought to be: "you cannot lead from the crowd" (my emphasis). The denouement of the play The Lion by Guyanese-born playwright, Michael Abbensetts, confirms this in the solitary end to which it sentences a former Caribbean autocrat dethroned into lonely exile in London.
The need for friendship becomes for many a political player of this ilk a vital necessity not quantifiable in any way that the political scientist who is wholly dependent on the empiricist method of analysis would wish. Political memoirs do help, however; and Margaret Thatcher, in her own account of her prime ministerial years, found such friendship in her husband, Denis. Many would no doubt find a parallel for Jamaica's Chief Minister Norman Manley in his wife Edna, the sculptors and animateur to artists while Alexander Bustamante found his friend in the person of Gladys Longbridge, his private secretary-turned-spouse.
A genuine understanding of and respect for such needs would no doubt rid any Maximum Leader of the sort of bloated self-regard that verges "on the superhuman, immune to the frailities and doubts that plague the generality of mankind". For these are not the stuff of the sane leadership, which the Commonwealth Caribbean must have if it is to function throughout the Third Millennium as the tolerant, civilised, freedom-loving society it has been fighting to become since 1838 and again in 1938 and 1962.
