Democ­ra­cy is a messy busi­ness. In the House of Com­mons in 1947, Win­ston Churchill said that many forms of gov­ern­ment had been tried, and no one could pre­tend that democ­ra­cy was ei­ther per­fect or wise. Al­so, that democ­ra­cy was the worst form of gov­ern­ment “ex­cept for all the oth­ers that have been tried.”

Its ad­van­tage is that it puts the in­ter­ests of those be­ing gov­erned above those do­ing the gov­ern­ing. It pro­vides a mech­a­nism for po­lit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tion by al­low­ing cit­i­zens to se­lect their rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Through this process, cit­i­zens have a voice in shap­ing the opin­ions that will guide de­ci­sion-mak­ing by elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Cit­i­zens vote, run for of­fice, and in­flu­ence the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process. Elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives are ac­count­able to the cit­i­zens, al­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment to re­flect the wish­es and needs of the cit­i­zen­ry.

At least that is the the­o­ry. To achieve this ob­jec­tive, the ba­sic rights and free­doms (free speech, the right to as­sem­ble, and re­li­gious choice) must be re­flect­ed, guar­an­teed, and pro­tect­ed in the con­sti­tu­tion­al and le­gal frame­work.

Pro­tec­tion of these rights and free­doms is en­sured by sep­a­rat­ing the pow­ers of the ex­ec­u­tive, leg­isla­tive and ju­di­cial arms. This en­sures mu­tu­al over­sight, trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and fair­ness in gov­ern­ment.

Trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty are re­quired of all the pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions in­volved in cre­at­ing a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety and in sup­port­ing struc­tures such as po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

If the un­der­ly­ing in­sti­tu­tions, like po­lit­i­cal par­ties, suf­fer from po­lit­i­cal po­lar­i­sa­tion or deep di­vi­sions, it would be dif­fi­cult to achieve con­sen­sus on chal­leng­ing is­sues. This could erode trust in de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the in­flu­ence of monied spe­cial in­ter­ests with­in a po­lit­i­cal par­ty could lead to out­comes that favour nar­row in­ter­ests rather than the pub­lic good. This could lead to a per­cep­tion of un­due in­flu­ence and cor­rup­tion with­in in­di­vid­ual par­ties that would fol­low a win­ning par­ty in­to gov­ern­ment and un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty of the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process.

An in­her­ent weak­ness of democ­ra­cies is the ten­den­cy to fo­cus on short-term is­sues dri­ven by the elec­toral cy­cle. Em­pha­sis­ing the short term of­ten leads to in­ad­e­quate re­spons­es to long-term chal­lenges like crime, in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment, fis­cal sta­bil­i­ty, and cli­mate change as elect­ed of­fi­cials pri­ori­tise poli­cies that yield im­me­di­ate re­sults at the ex­pense of long-term plan­ning and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

This is a gen­er­al elec­tion year for T&T, and these is­sues have be­come more pal­pa­ble. The two main po­lit­i­cal par­ties have lead­er­ship suc­ces­sion is­sues that have been pa­pered over rather than set­tled. The lead­er­ship chal­lenge with­in the UNC looks far from set­tled, with a thin ve­neer of co­he­sion to give the ap­pear­ance of par­ty uni­ty. The sit­u­a­tion in the PNM ap­pears the same.

Al­though the Prime Min­is­ter has an­nounced his in­ten­tion to re­sign, the tim­ing of his de­par­ture is im­pre­cise, sug­gest­ing un­fin­ished busi­ness. The on­go­ing machi­na­tions with­in the par­ty in the in­ter­reg­num sug­gest that the de­lay is to en­sure that the PNM gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­dates do not yield a po­ten­tial chal­lenger to his hand-picked suc­ces­sor.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the egre­gious swipe at the TTPS dur­ing the de­bate on the SoE in Par­lia­ment in­di­cates that there was nev­er any se­ri­ous plan to ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion and the SoE was de­signed to give the ap­pear­ance of co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tion. The coun­try faces se­ri­ous long-term eco­nom­ic and so­cial is­sues that have not been ad­dressed. The two main po­lit­i­cal par­ties need to do much more to demon­strate that ei­ther par­ty is a cred­i­ble in­stru­ment to ad­dress the coun­try’s dif­fi­cult fu­ture.