BOSTON – Address by the Hon Kamla Persad-Bissessar Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago at Harvard University, November 9th, 2010:
I am deeply honoured by your invitation to share an evening with you, focused on an exchange of ideas on leadership and cooperation.
Indeed successful leadership is a function of committed followers.
A leader’s performance depends on the cooperation and contribution of others.
The challenge facing leaders is to construct a vision and a framework of ideas that inspire others to partner with them for the achievement of mutually agreed goals.
I believe that LEADERSHIP starts with an inspiring vision, is sustained by a commitment to ethical values and is executed through partnership and cooperation.
Successful 21st century leadership will depend on the extent to which people see themselves partnering with ethical and involved leaders.
In today’s world, an enlightened citizenry, empowered by global communications is not prepared to be dictated to, but want to contribute in a meaningful way in crafting their future.
The Importance of Dialogue
The demand for dialogue between the governors and the governed has never been as intense as it is today.
It has to do with people wanting some level of control over their future.
I am certain that it is as a result of my fellow citizens’ belief that they were being genuinely invited into a partnership that they voted as overwhelmingly as they did for my people’s partnership government; a government consisting of a coalition of five political parties, including labour.
In fact, to sustain the integrity and trust between the people and the government, we are committed, as part of our official policy, to people centred development.
This requires openness, continuous communication, transparency, wide stakeholder consultation and consensus building in decision making.
It also requires that leaders maintain close contacts with constituents.
The Paradigm Shift
The paradigm of governance has shifted from one of authoritarianism or different degrees of the same to one where the people view themselves as employers of the government with the right to fire as much as they hire through the democratic process of the vote.
Twelve months ago, no one least of all I, expected that I would be standing here to address you as Prime Minister of my country this evening.
It was after a process of consultation and consensus building with as wide a cross section of people and interest groups as was possible that I made the leap to contest the leadership of my party, a victory that propelled me to the position of Leader of the Opposition.
When the opportunity first arose for me to contest the leadership of my party against the founder and leader of my party, who had been regarded by many as legendary, I recalled the struggles of Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi’s style has always reminded me that there is nothing as powerful as the force of character, nothing as persuasive as personal conviction and nothing as transforming as prayer.
I applied all three in my fight to first unseat the leader of my party and then the sitting Prime Minister, all within the space of five months.
I believe that if one puts God in front and trusts in Him and if one has a mission to serve, then success is ensured.
The Importance of Coalition
I recognized that in a diverse and complex society such as Trinidad and Tobago, to win you must build a coalition. And, to build a coalition, cooperation is essential.
When that realisation and the process of consensus building led to victory and leadership of my party, it reinforced my position that the same approach was needed to secure Government.
I believe in the power of consultation to secure cooperation.
The priorities of the people must be reflected in the policies and programs of the government.
Through consultation, you seek to ensure that the people share in the national patrimony.
Again, it was our success at building a coalition that created the belief in the population at large that our People’s Partnership could win.
This belief then became reality on May 24th of this year.
There is no reason why I should seek at this stage to change a winning formula.
My approach since winning power has been to continue and even enlarge this process of consultation and consensus building.
This is why I choose to spend so much time meeting the people in their villages, identifying with their issues and responding to their concerns.
Ministry of the People and its importance
This is why I created a unique Ministry, the Ministry of the People, a Ministry aimed at improving the responsiveness of Government to the needs of the challenged, the vulnerable, the poor, in particular, as well as de-bureaucratising government.
My mantra for members of my government is simple – we have three priorities: “Serve the People, Serve the People, and Serve the People.”
I believe that the most powerful leaders are servant leaders.
My inspiration to lead
As I have begun to lead my Government and people, I find inspiration in Nelson Mandela’s leadership style. I recently read the following about Mandela.
Mandela loved to reminisce about his boyhood and his lazy afternoons herding cattle. “You know,” he would say, “you can only lead them from behind.”
As a boy, Mandela was greatly influenced by Jongintaba, the tribal king who raised him.
When Jongintaba had meetings of his court, the men gathered in a circle, and only after all had spoken did the king begin to speak.
The chief’s job, Mandela said, was not to tell people what to do but to form a consensus.
“Don’t enter the debate too early,” he used to say.
He would gather half a dozen men around the dining-room table or sometimes in a circle in his driveway.
Some of his colleagues would shout at him — to move faster, to be more radical — and Mandela would simply listen.
When he finally did speak at those meetings, he slowly and methodically summarized everyone’s points of view and then unfurled his own thoughts, subtly steering the decision in the direction he wanted without imposing it.
And so I do believe that we must first listen and then lead.
The art of leadership is also allowing yourself to be led. “It is wise,” he said, “to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.”
My path to leadership
My path to leadership has followed a meandering road.
There are times when it never seemed that I would achieve the leadership of my party but I have to admit that I have always had a vision to lead my country from the day 24 years ago when I entered public life.
And it was on the 24th of January 2010, I won the leadership of my party by a landslide and it was on the 24th May that I won the general election to become Prime Minister with an overwhelming majority.
In pursuing my mission to lead, I realised that just as it is said that without an ennobling vision nations perish, so too an individual aspiring to lead must also have an inspired vision, one that embraces the aspirations of the people.
I recognized very early in this quest that I needed others to identify with my cause and to expend energy and commit time and effort for as long as it was required.
In this quest, such commitment on the part of others had to be motivated by a spirit of volunteerism, a belief in something that was larger and more important than my own desire, and with which those who supported my cause identified.
I did not have the financial or other resources to hire a paid staff. Managing volunteerism is a special skill which you need both as an aspiring leader and as well as Prime Minister.
I have learnt also that having won it is most essential not to forget those who laboured to get you to the top.
Appreciation is vital in the style of a leader.
You must lead from the front (that is what you were elected to do) but you must never ever leave your base behind.
If you do you won’t stay in power for long.
What I stand for as PM
My challenge in the journey to Prime Minister was to make clear what my cause was, for I knew that people have a greater passion to engage when they identify with a purpose.
I also know that when people are given an opportunity to participate in articulating the pathways to the realization of a common vision that they become committed.
This has been true for Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela amongst others.
For all of these three leaders, the cause was greater than their individual ambitions and it was around the cause of freedom that people coalesced and in turn sacrificed.
You may be asking, what was or is the cause around which I expected people to coalesce.
Maybe it is reflected in my own experiences.
I was born a Hindu, attended a Presbyterian secondary school. I was baptised as a Spiritual Baptist.
I studied, lived and worked in Jamaica. I studied law in Barbados. I went to school in England.
These experiences taught me to value diverse cultures and peoples and the success that can be achieved from synthesizing the richness of this diversity.
It created for me an understanding of the importance of being open to all peoples and the realization that everyone is capable of contributing to the whole.
I challenged myself with the mission to build a society through a leadership style where everyone felt valued, appreciated and invited to make a meaningful contribution to the development of our nation.
If I were to answer as to my leadership philosophy, I would answer in one word, inclusiveness.
My country had suffered enough from people who lived on the margins of national life.
It truncated creativity and stymied nationalism.
You cannot become a competitive nation with only half of the talent and energy of your people.
In constructing my Government, I have had to face sometimes severe criticisms from my faithful party members that I am appointing political enemies to positions of influence.
When you have a philosophy of inclusiveness, this is a real challenge
It is a delicate balance which I must achieve in the interest of uniting my country.
It is another form of negotiation in which I must engage with respect to the internal politics in my party.
I recall Nelson Mandela. Richard Stengel writes that Mandela believed that embracing his rivals was a way of controlling them: they were more dangerous on their own than within his circle of influence.
He cherished loyalty, but he was never obsessed by it.
After all, he used to say, “people act in their own interest.”
It was simply a fact of human nature, not a flaw or a defect.
The flip side of being an optimist — and he is one — is trusting people too much.
But Mandela recognized that the way to deal with those he didn’t trust was to neutralize them with charm.”
The dividing factors in TT
In my country race, religion and culture has always divided some of our people.
It was always considered politically correct for politicians to so divide with the intention that one group would perpetually stay in opposition.
Such a strategy came out of our colonial experience where the colonial elite thrived on the principle of divide and rule thereby creating deep divisions within our society.
They were not interested in building a nation.
Instead they were exploiters of material and human resources – which always leaves a nation impoverished.
A society can progress economically even in the face of such division but such progress will not be sustainable.
In addition there will not be the cohesiveness to build a nation.
I have always been troubled by divisiveness, by inequality of treatment, by favouritism, by political patronage and social inequalities.
As a child, I witnessed and experienced it all.
As an attorney, I have fought such issues in the courts.
I have always wanted a fair society, a society that rewards merit.
I believed that the majority of people in my country also wanted an end to divisiveness.
This was the cause I advocated… the cause through which my life found expression.
My slogan and rationale for my win
The slogan which I used to advocate an end to the divisiveness and around which I called on our Peoples’ Partnership to rally was presented in four simple words: “We will all rise!”
I firmly believe that we can have a common vision and mission though we may be of diverse cultures, traditions and ethnicities.
This is why on assuming office my government adopted a policy of multiculturalism.
You cannot change the innate nature and cultural soul of a person.
You will always achieve more if, in a diverse society such as ours, each person can be respected and allowed to be his/her cultural self.
This promotes a feeling of inclusiveness and prevents people from living on the margins of society, feeling alienated.
Given the ethnic diversity of Trinidad and Tobago as well as the belief in some quarters that the rights of the East Indian will be best served with an East Indian Prime Minister, or that the rights of the African will best be served if there is a Prime Minister of African descent, my success depended on convincing the population that I subscribed to a set of principles and values that transcended race, religion and culture.
I could not win an election only with the support of the Indo population.
Given the geographic distribution of electoral seats and the demographic distribution of the population which suggested that the majority of seats were where the Afro Trinbagonian lived, I could not win an election without Afro Trinbagonian votes.
The election results proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the philosophy of inclusiveness, fairness and equality of opportunity which I advocated resonated well.
The litmus test of this was in our sister island of Tobago where more than 90% of the population are of African descent and where we won both seats.
Over the few months since I have been appointed Prime Minister my commitment to this principle of inclusion has been tested on many occasions – in the appointment of directors to state boards, the appointment of ambassadors and even in the appointment of my own Cabinet ministers.
These tests have come from within my own party and from the nation at large where many of my own supporters expected to receive all the benefits of being in power.
I have had to face criticism, opposition and even anger at times but these are the challenges of leadership and I shall not build a new society and unite my country if I do not impress on everyone, by the stance that I take, my own deep commitment to this philosophy.
I should add, lest there be any misunderstanding, that this is not about affirmative action.
Rather, it is about prudent and just action to entrench the belief in each person in our country that they can create a meaningful future for themselves and their families.
Secondly, it reflects the recognition that we cannot, in a nation as small as ours, afford to exclude anyone of talent.
We must all rise together.
My principle of fairness and inclusiveness
I have also articulated here this evening the principle of fairness as I believe that in the same way that we must be clear about the society we wish to build, no journey is meaningful and sustainable unless it has an ethical underpinning and unless its direction is charted with a moral compass.
History is replete with leaders who have led their followers to destruction.
The worthwhile goal is one where both the means and the end can be fully justified.
As a mother and a leader, I ask myself every day, what would my child and grandchildren think if they knew what action I had taken or what decision I had made.
Would they be proud of me? Or would they be ashamed?
These thoughts are uppermost in my mind every moment of every day.
Hon Kamla Persad-Bissessar Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago at Harvard University
Emerging Economies
In emerging economies, where there is tremendous pressure to take urgent and meaningful measures to alleviate the hardships endured by large proportions of the population – where there is the urgent need to feed the hungry, to provide decent medical care for the sick, to provide assistance to the elderly, to educate the young and provide meaningful jobs for the population as a whole, the temptation is always great to look at the end and use it to justify the means.
I am always faced with this temptation but I truly believe that the ultimate welfare of our people can only endure if we can justify the means as equally as we justify the ends.
I have told each member of my government that we shall not build this administration unless we build it on the rock solid foundation of integrity
It is indeed axiomatic to say that integrity leads to truth.
Truth and integrity lead to cooperation and peace and that cooperation and peace lead to prosperity.
In many emerging markets today, there is still a debate as to whether democracy or a benevolent dictatorship is the better route to economic and social progress.
There are several countries which have been able to increase gross domestic product by a firm hand – to put it mildly.
Benevolent dictatorships may lead to short term successes but when does the dictator stop being benevolent ? and, how can anyone but the people themselves decide what the priorities of the nation should be.
Put God in front and walk behind I say; and the voice of the people is the voice of God and so it is the people who lead us on deciding what are the priorities of our nation.
The founding fathers of your nation, in their far sightedness and wisdom, understood this and chose to build a nation where the will of the people was paramount.
There are many times when we are frustrated by the strictures and requirements of democracy, so many times when it seems to fail us in achieving the goals to which we aspire but we are firmly of the view that without it the ship of state will flounder on the rocks of arrogance and plain and simple wrong information.
In the end every decision must be questioned – because we have no monopoly on ideas.
We must be accountable for every decision and we must be fully transparent in all our dealings.
These are the only routes to truly lasting successes.
Democracy
We are clear in our minds that successful nations today will only be built through the channeling of intellectual power to meaningful ends.
Democracy and the spirit of cooperation are the only channels through which this can be accomplished.
It may take longer to arrive at decisions but because of consensus, commitment will be higher and subsequent progress faster.
I have, so far, this evening outlined the basic philosophy (inclusiveness) and the underlying principle (fairness/integrity) which have been the building blocks of my career in politics and on which my government is based
But you may well ask what is our Mission?
What does my Government wish to achieve?
In short, our goal is to create a socially cohesive, globally competitive nation with justice and equity for all.
We recognise that we can only achieve this goal if we can engage the creativity and engender the highest levels of cooperation from everyone in our society.
Our strategy will be the same as that which we have so successfully employed in the past, of seeking the cooperation of all our people through a process of consultation and consensus building.
I am delighted and to some extent astounded by the extent to which our vision has been embraced by the people of Trinidad and Tobago.
Not even I expected the widespread support which my Peoples’ Partnership Government received in the last general election.
Now of course, we are faced with the challenge of governing and more particularly of delivering on our promises.
In delivering on these promises hard decisions will have to be made. Risks will have to be taken and at times we shall have to take strong positions.
We shall also have to ask for sacrifices to be made and we shall have to devise mechanisms for ensuring that these sacrifices are equitably shared. One such challenge that we face currently has been the crisis posed by one of our largest financial conglomerates, the CL Financial Group, the collapse of which has affected many of our citizens.
I am confident that we shall arrive at a meaningful and sustainable solution because we have chosen a process based on widespread consultation among all stakeholder groups and we are committed to ensuring that this process is transparent and meaningful.
There is the matter of ensuring that the coalition stays together.
In 1986 there was a coalition which swept the polls 33/3.
The failure of that coalition had to do with the belief that the loss of the other partner would not have brought down the fall of the government because of the large majority.
What was not realized was that the split affected the belief of the people in coalition governments.
It seems we have been given another vote of confidence by the electorate.
To keep the coalition together means the art of negotiation.
Coalitions represent interests.
A leader must always be sensitive to this.
Again, consultation and consensus as well as creating win-win outcomes will be the strategies to be used.
I believe that people are in general rational and therefore can be appealed to on the basis of reason.
I believe that if leaders of the coalition genuinely believe that they are sharing in the leadership, the coalition will grow in strength.
Conclusion
Finally in closing I want to state that we firmly believe that we can achieve our vision. Smallness as a nation has never been a barrier for us.
We are one of the largest exporters of ammonia and methanol in the world and we are the largest exporters of Liquified Natural Gas in the western hemisphere notwithstanding that we have less than 0.5% of the natural gas reserves in Latin America.
Although we have a very small population, our students have in the past continuously beaten the best in the world in the natural sciences at the General Certificate of Education Examinations at the advanced levels.
We have produced Nobel laureates and world class athletes. There is every reason to believe that with the right leadership, a clear vision and an ennobling philosophy we can achieve our goals.
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