|
Caribbean Islands Political Dynamics
Politics in Grenada traditionally has been more concerned with
personalities and class interests than with ideology. Political
parties, even those that grow out of labor union movements, are
usually dominated by charismatic leaders who can motivate their
followers through strong emotional (or, in the case of Gairy, even
mystical) appeal. The aspect of class interest has tended to
devolve into lower versus middle-class aspirations, there being no
political party or parties commonly identified with the interests
of the upper class.
In this respect, as in many others, the PRG represented an
aberration in Grenadian history. The "vanguard" of the revolution--
the NJM--was a party whose membership was drawn from the urban
middle class (mainly young professionals who saw their
opportunities limited under the corrupt Gairy government). When the
PRG assumed power in March 1979, it presented the novel impression
of a middle-class junta that sought, at least rhetorically, to
reach out to the poor (the workers and peasantry). This initial
promise never bore fruit, however, as the PRG was unable to make
lasting economic gains and eventually fell victim to ideological
infighting between Leninists and pragmatists, an internal conflict
that paved the way for external intervention.
The New National Party (NNP) scored a resounding electoral
victory in December 1984, winning fourteen of the fifteen seats in
the House of Representatives. The NNP was neither an established
party nor a homogeneous one, but rather an amalgamation of three
separate parties that, with some outside encouragement, ultimately
joined forces to ward off the potential restoration to power of
Gairy.
The senior partner in the NNP was Blaize's Grenada National
Party (GNP). Established in 1956, the GNP has traditionally
represented the interests of the urban middle class, drawing the
majority of its support from St. George's. The GNP led the
government in Grenada during the periods 1957-61 and 1962-67. These
two periods of GNP government represented the only interruptions in
the domination of Grenadian politics by Gairy and GULP between 1951
and 1979. In 1976 the GNP joined an opposition coalition that
included Bishop's NJM, but it played no part in the PRG after the
1979 coup.
Another member of the NNP was the National Democratic Party
(NDP), established in February 1984 and led by George Brizan.
Formerly a member of the NJM, Brizan dissociated himself from the
group after it came to be dominated by Bishop, Coard, and others
who envisioned it as a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party. Brizan's
political leanings were said to be social democratic.
The third constituent of the NNP was the Grenada Democratic
Movement (GDM), founded in Barbados by Francis Alexis. The NNP had
originally included the Christian Democratic Labour Party (CDLP)
among its ranks, but the CDLP dropped out shortly after the
establishment of the NNP over what appeared to be a personal
dispute between Blaize and CDLP leader Winston Whyte.
The evolution of the NNP was neither easy nor smooth. The first
step in the process was the April 1984 formation of the Team for
National Togetherness (TNT). This initial umbrella group was to
have brought the GNP, NDP, and GDM under one political banner;
however, its establishment was announced publicly before the
private process of negotiating party organization could get fully
underway. These talks eventually bogged down over the issue of how
many candidates from each of the constituent parties would be
allowed to contest the parliamentary elections. Frustrated with the
haggling, Brizan withdrew the NDP from the TNT in August. The
GNP/GDM grouping was then renamed the Team for National Unity.
In addition to the specific dispute over candidacies, the TNT
leaders also differed over broader issues of ideology and political
protocol, according to some sources. These divergences seem to have
pitted Blaize, the conservative elder statesman, against Brizan,
the young progressive. Blaize is reported to have felt that the GNP
deserved primacy within the coalition by virtue of its longer
history as an established party; he is said to have demanded veto
power over all proposed candidates. There may also have been
disputes over specific issues, such as the presence of United
States and Caribbean military forces on Grenada and the
continuation of certain social programs begun under the PRG.
The seeming inability of the moderate Grenadian parties to
unite was viewed with concern by the leaders of neighboring
countries. Having supported military action to rid the country of
a seemingly unstable Marxist-Leninist regime, these leaders did not
wish to see Grenada returned to the control of Gairy, whom they
viewed as the most likely beneficiary of a divided electorate. If
nothing else, Gairy's return to power would have represented a
public relations embarrassment of the first order. Therefore,
acting in a tradition of regional consultation stretching back at
least as far as the West Indies Federation of 1958-62, prime
ministers Tom Adams of Barbados, James Mitchell of St. Vincent and
the Grenadines, and John G.M. Compton of St. Lucia volunteered
their services as mediators in the negotiating process. Most
reports concur that the session that finally produced the NNP was
held in August 1984 on Union Island in St. Vincent and the
Grenadines. The neighboring prime ministers were present at the
August 26 public ceremony in Grenada at which the formation of the
new coalition was announced.
Reports of friction among the NNP membership began to circulate
soon after the December 1984 elections. Factionalism within the
party stemmed from the nature of its founding, the uneasiness that
prevailed among the leaders of the constituent parties, and the
autocratic control exercised by Blaize over party affairs. Early
reports hinted at rivalry between Alexis and Brizan for the right
to succeed Blaize as party leader. This notion was reinforced by
the competition between the two for the post of deputy political
leader, a position to which Alexis was elected at the party
convention of December 1985. Subsequent events tended to draw
Alexis and Brizan closer together, however. At the 1986 party
convention, Blaize's associate Ben Jones replaced Alexis as deputy
political leader, cementing further the dominance of Blaize's GNP
faction within the NNP.
The first public demonstrations of the NNP's internal tensions
were provided by the defections of two members of Parliament--Kenny
Lalsingh and Phinsley St. Louis--each of whom left the party in
August 1986 and formed separate political organizations. In
February 1987, observers reported that Brizan, Alexis, and Tillman
Thomas, the junior minister for legal affairs, had refused to sign
a declaration of party unity. In April this simmering dispute
boiled over when the three resigned from the government, citing
their disagreement with Blaize over what had come to be known as
the "retrenchment," the proposed release of 1,500-1,800 civil
servants. Although they did not announce their withdrawal from the
NNP at that time, Alexis and Brizan technically became part of the
parliamentary opposition, reducing Blaize's majority, once fourteen
to one, to nine to six.
In October 1987, the opposition coalesced under the banner of
yet another political party, the National Democratic Congress
(NDC). Brizan was elected as leader of the NDC, which also included
Alexis, Lalsingh, Thomas, and St. Louis among its ranks. Although
its level of popular support was difficult to gauge, the NDC
appeared to generate some enthusiasm among those Grenadians looking
for an alternative to the established political organizations
headed by Blaize and Gairy.
Aside from the NNP, the only major political party in Grenada
in the mid-1980s was GULP, which dated back to 1951 and was led by
Gairy. Once the dominant political force on the island, Gairy and
his party gradually lost the confidence of most Grenadians through
corruption and repression. This erosion of public support was
demonstrated by the generally positive reaction to the 1979 seizure
of power by Maurice Bishop and the NJM. In the post-Bishop period,
GULP clearly suffered from Gairy's enforced exile, his diminished
personal popularity, and the low level of party
institutionalization. GULP's disarray could be read in the party's
reaction to the December 1984 elections. Immediately after the
balloting, GULP appeared to represent the official parliamentary
opposition to the NNP. Its one victorious member, Marcel Peters,
defected after a dispute with party leader Gairy over political
tactics, however. Gairy had decried the elections as fraudulent and
ordered Peters to refuse his seat in the House. Peters refused,
withdrew from GULP, declared his own political organization
(apparently standard procedure for Grenadian politicians), and
assumed the post of leader of the opposition, a position he
eventually yielded to NNP defector St. Louis.
The history of GULP is the history of its leader, Eric Gairy.
Gairy began his political life as a labor leader, establishing the
Grenada Mental and Manual Workers Union (GMMWU) in 1950. The GMMWU
was a rural workers' union that concentrated its organizing efforts
within the Grenadian sugar industry. Like many young Grenadians,
Gairy left the island in search of work. After a short stint as a
construction worker in Trinidad and Tobago, Gairy moved on to the
oil refineries of Aruba. It was there that he began his labor
organizing activities, somewhat to the consternation of Dutch
authorities, who reportedly deported him in 1949. After asserting
his credentials as a populist leader through the vehicle of the
GMMWU, Gairy successfully entered the electoral arena in 1951 under
the banner of the newly formed GULP, which took 64 percent of that
year's ballots (the first held under the Universal Suffrage Law of
1950). Gairy and GULP lost only two of the six general elections
held from 1951 until 1979, when the party was overthrown by the
NJM. The party drew heavily on the organization and resources of
the GMMWU, and the membership of the two groups remained fluid
throughout Gairy's years in power.
Gairy returned to Grenada in January 1984 after another
involuntary exile, this one lasting almost five years. Although
Gairy appeared to have retained some support among the rural
population, most Grenadians seemed to have rejected him as a result
of his past history of strongman rule, corruption, and harassment
of political opponents.
After the electoral defeat of 1984, Gairy seemed to be making
plans to broaden the appeal of GULP. In April 1985, he claimed that
the party's leadership would be purged, that attempts would be made
to expand its low level of support among Grenadian youth, and that
all future GULP candidates for office would be drawn directly from
the ranks of the party and not recruited for only one campaign.
This last promise suggested an effort to institutionalize what had
long been a highly personalistic political organization. GULP
support appeared to be dwindling by 1987, however, as new party
leaders failed to emerge, other political leaders continued to
attract support among Gairy's former rural constituency, and the
party restricted its activities as a result of lack of funds.
Although GULP appeared largely ineffective as a political
vehicle, Gairy continued to enjoy some measure of influence on the
labor front. His longtime union organization, the GMMWU, was
renamed the Grenada Manual Maritime and Intellectual Workers Union
(GMMIWU). Its membership base still lay among rural agricultural
workers. The economic disarray left in the wake of the PRG and the
void in agricultural labor organization after the demise of the
Bishop regime left the GMMIWU in a good position to recruit new
members and exert influence on both the government and private
producers, although it, like GULP, suffered from underfunding and
possible defection of its members to other organizations.
The left, consisting of the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement
(MBPM) and the persistent remnants of the NJM, was an insignificant
political force in the late 1980s. The MBPM was founded in 1984 by
Kendrick Radix, an original NJM member and PRG cabinet minister who
played no part in the short-lived Revolutionary Military Council.
The MBPM began as the Maurice Bishop and the 19th October Martyrs
Foundation, a group dedicated to raising funds for scholarships for
Grenadian students (presumably for study in "progressive" or
socialist countries) and to erecting a monument to Bishop and other
fallen comrades. Although successful in its monument campaign, the
MBPM failed to have the Point Salines International Airport named
after Bishop. The transformation of the MBPM from foundation to
political party occurred in August 1984; Radix claimed that only
his movement could prevent Gairy's return to power. During the
election campaign, he promised that an MBPM government would
confiscate supposedly idle farmland that had been previously held
by the PRG but had since reverted to its previous owners because of
a lack of proper compensation. The movement failed to attract a
popular following in the 1984 elections, however, capturing only 5
percent of the vote and no seats in Parliament.
The group still laying claim to the title of NJM represented
the hard core of the organization, the remaining "Coardites" who
supported the establishment of an orthodox Marxist-Leninist state
but who had not involved themselves directly in the putsch of
October 19, 1983. The NJM declined to participate in the elections
of 1984, probably knowing that it would have drawn even less
support than Radix's MBPM (with which it continued to feud
rhetorically). The continued existence of this organization despite
a good deal of public antipathy was one measure of the openness of
the Grenadian system.
Other small political parties continued to function in Grenada
in the mid-1980s. Whyte's CDLP contested the elections but
attracted only 0.26 percent of the total vote. The Grenada
Federated Labour Party, an organization that first contested
elections in 1957 but that subsequently lay dormant, drew only 0.02
percent of the 1984 vote.
Data as of November 1987
|
