Trump’s defeat: Caribbean lessons

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One Caribbean Nation.

Dr. Tennyson Joseph

Trump’s defeat: Caribbean lessons

THE 2016 ELECTION of Donald Trump as president of the United States occurred on a wave of false claims about the failure of “experts” and “government insiders”. It was based on the related and even more dangerously erroneous claim that because of the power of private capital, then the person best qualified for political leadership, is a businessman, whose proof of qualification, is his vast wealth.

Under this neoliberal ideology through which Trump’s presidency occurred, the expectation was that social-democracy was dead, and only those people who could navigate countries into the new era of wealthmaking, small government, and the end of welfare and the dependence of the state, had a right to govern.

Those who are now busy laughing Donald Trump off the political stage for his obvious lack of political experience, must remember that they were only very recently guilty of drinking the cheap Kool-Aid. Its aftertaste is still lingering on their reddened taste buds. Indeed, the same ideological and economic forces which paved Trump’s emergence, have had a similar impact on the politics of the Caribbean.

For example, we cannot separate the ascendency of Donald Trump from the election of a businessman like Allen Chastanet in St Lucia, and related developments. It was fascinating to observe how glibly an argument was being made for the election of a novice political outsider as a potential prime minister, and he was being sold as a businessman and nothing else.

Today, the failure of the Trump presidency stands as vivid proof of the falsity of the claims for the neo-liberal businessman politician.

COVID-19 has laid bare the inability of the businessman type to manage a public health crisis. They simply did not enter politics for this. They had assumed that they would seize state power to further enhance free market capitalism in the interest of the rich.

Instead, they are now expected to put lives before profit, a role for which they had never been trained.

In the Caribbean, COVID has ironically devastated the much vaunted tourism industry. In response, the businessmen-leaders have been busy using the COVID crisis to save tourism for hoteliers, despite the global restrictions on air travel. For similar reasons Trump could not understand that being president was not a moment for advancing his family business and for employing his relatives.

The Caribbean colonial records are replete with examples of the old ruling elites expressing complete disdain for the post-colonial working class representatives. Today, there are many Caribbean boardrooms and bedrooms in which the contempt for these “labour boys [and girls] who don’t understand business” continues unabated.

The total failure of the Trump presidency should put paid to such folly. Plato had long warned that ruler-ship is a very special craft and the least qualified are those devoted to the pursuit of profit.

Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specialising in regional affairs.

Tennyson S. D. Joseph was born in Choiseul, St Lucia, and undertook his secondary education at St. Mary’s College, the Alma Mater of Nobel laureates W. Arthur Lewis and Derek Walcott.  He attained his PhD from the University of Cambridge, and his MPhil and BA degrees from the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill.  His MPhil was written on the political thought of CLR James and his PhD on the politics of decolonization under globalization in St. Lucia.  Since August 2007, he has been a Lecturer in Political Science at the UWI, Cave Hill.  Prior to lecturing at UWI, Joseph served briefly as the Administrative Attaché to the Prime Minister of St. Lucia (Kenny Anthony) between 2000 and 2003, and was an Opposition Senator in the Parliament of Saint Lucia for a brief period in 2007.  In addition to his University teaching, Joseph remains constantly engaged as a public intellectual and public consultant.  He is a weekly columnist in the Daily Nation Newspaper (Barbados); a member of a CARICOM Technical Working Group on a Regional Youth Agenda; and was a Member of a Foreign Policy Review Task Force for the Government of St. Lucia, chaired by retired UWI Professor, and former PM Vaughan Lewis.  Joseph is married and has fathered two daughters, Nzingha and Choiselle.

(Nation newspaper Barbados 12/3/2020)

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