Peter Polack

By Peter Polack and Emil Arguelles

For a long time the world was ruled by monarchies and autocrats that even exist in part today in Caribbean countries and wholly in some places in the outside world. The last several centuries have seen the decline of royalty and the rise of democracies in the world, particularly in the last half of the twentieth century.

With the rise of equal rights and fewer colonies in the West Indies, there came elections usually contested by political parties. In several countries, that has been consistently reduced to two party states like Trinidad and Jamaica. The USA is also a two party state. Some, such as the British territory, the Cayman Islands, embrace a hybrid of rotating the same political parties and nomad independent candidates.

The Calypso carousel.

This profusion of coalition governments have given rise to wider but shallow policies, greater participation of elected candidates without a powerful party base, and a fragile existence, giving rise to more frequent defections and no confidence votes. Coalitions are less interested in the ongoing reform of proportional voting in electoral districts despite much work usually done in this area, then ignored.

Most of Europe, the United Kingdom excepted, are coalition governments. Most of the top three powers of the world are autocracies. As one party states evolve into two party states then coalitions, key vote power appears to then rebound back to personalities.

The Caribbean has seen a fair share of failed coalitions especially in the UK colonies with some leadership being a matter of days, denied the opportunity of real tenure and implementation of agenda. The Turks and Caicos Islands and the Cayman Islands have all seen leadership under two hundred days. On one occasion this was caused by the British imposition of direct rule.

Round and round the merry go round.

No such problem usually exists in the leadership of two party states of the larger islands that see voters ride or die with the party or country leaders. This makes for leaders that cannot be contested internally in the course of government except where there is a small majority in parliament or defection by groups dissatisfied with the status quo, sometimes decades old.

Coalition will often see the reduction of party power with the growth of influence by a few individuals which then carries the danger of democracy being reduced to personality or autocracy.

There but for the grace of God go us.

Emil Arguelles 

Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer from the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.

Emil Arguelles is a Belizean lawyer, arbitrator, former Speaker of the House of Representatives of Belize, Vice-President of the Belize Bar, Crown Counsel and Belize Chess Champion.

Their views are their own.