How the Top Performers Built Capacity to Deliver the EC Political Model

Capacity to deliver the Eastern Caribbean (EC) political model is everything. Three-term Dominica Prime Minister (PM) Mary Eugenia Charles and six-term PM Roosevelt Skerrit could not set their endurance records without it. But how do such top performers build that capacity in the first place?

            For now, there is only one way—by learning!

            Not by being taught.

            Not by reading books either.

            But by drawing lessons from experience. And putting them into practice. That’s the definition of learning. And that’s how the capacity to deliver the EC model is built.

            In learning, there is no physical teacher—except experience.

            No prescribed texts.

            No paper-and-pencil tests. Just results. Do real people listen to you? Follow you? Vote for you—give you their little cross?

            There are no certificates—except proof that you have been duly nominated to contest an election. Or duly elected.

            What’s so hard about that? you ask.

            Ask Lennox Linton, the former Dominica United Workers Party (UWP) and Opposition Leader, I say. He illustrates the difficulty to learn well. He entered electoral politics in middle age with a knack for speaking but not listening. He once got fired from a radio station job for not moving on to a new topic after talking about the same topic day after day after day for months—with legal consequences for the station.

            In 2013, UWP recruited Linton to check PM Skerrit. They misunderstood the job to be done. They thought Skerrit was a no-face, boldface leader. No. What sets Skerrit apart is it’s easy for him to learn to lead from experience. What sets Linton aside is it’s hard for him to learn from experience. I entered into evidence he had not changed his approach to people as an aloof personality. The same charge late PM Rosie Douglas laid against one-term PM Edison James (UWP). Linton did not  learn.

            In 2014, Linton took three seats from Skerrit, the first person to do so. UWP already saw itself in office again. Then, in 2019, Skerrit took his three seats back. Linton could not hit two threes in a row. The first was a fluke. Learning leads to long-term behavior change, which brings consistent results. Linton had not learned to deliver the EC model.

            Finally, in 2022, Linton resigned his Party Leader job with immediate effect. What learned political leader does that?

            Learning to lead in the EC model presents a great challenge. The ruling political elite is the black and Kalinago working-class. Most educated middle-class individuals just don’t feel they have anything to learn from the working-class, far less how to lead them. They won’t stoop so low!

            Rosie Douglas did it. Mary Eugenia Charles did it. Roosevelt Skerrit did it.

            Like the old folks say, Who can’t hear, will feel!