THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES

TRINIDAD and Tobago’s first Prime Minister Dr. Eric Williams fostered so much dread among his key officials that they were fearful to intervene when he was dying.

Williams’ top brass declined to step in until it was too late, as he deteriorated rapidly and died on March 29, 1981.

He was unwell on Friday March 29 during a Cabinet meeting, his speech slurred, with saliva at the side of his mouth, and he complained about the effects of tablets he was taking.

He was ailing even more during the afternoon’s sitting of Parliament.

As the weekend wore on, Williams’ medical condition worsened, and he kept on the same work clothes, with sweat bands under his armpits and a general dinghy look and weak appearance.

He had become paranoid and distrustful of everyone.

In previous months, he had fired his medical doctors, Dr. Halsey McShine and Dr. Courtenay Bartholomew.

Over the weekend, his key men, Errol Mahabir, Kamaluddin Mohammed, Dr. Ken Julien and Mervyn De Souva, consulted, and called his eldest daughter, Erica Williams-Connell, resident in Miami.

A couple of his front men visited him on the morning of his eventual death, and while talking thought he was dozing off when, instead, he was slipping into a coma, victim of a heart attack.

Eventually, his key officials decided to contact medic Dr. Winston Ince.

But they first made a pact.

De Souva told Mahabir: “Let’s agree that should (Williams) decide to have our skins when he recovers, we will take responsibility for calling in Ince.”

Mahabir agreed.

But when Dr. Ince came in, he reported: “I can’t feel a pulse.”

Dr. Williams – and this stark development as he slumped to his death – vividly exemplify the effects of apprehension, awe and angst evoked by a maximum leader.

Strong-willed and dictatorial leaders everywhere provoke such trepidation.

Political scientist Dr. Selwyn Ryan had said that Williams was treated by his followers like “a providential messiah.”

Psychologists have long said that authoritarian leaders thrive on fear, are surrounded by yes people, reverence themselves, and consider that they are the reservoir of all solutions.

They love supporters to fawn over them, to be worshipful of their ideas and programmes.

They make decisions with little involvement from team members and they induce much “group think.”

In other words, whatever they say goes, as they create structured and rigid environments.

Power is centralised with authoritarian leaders.

Fear of losing such power often corrupts those who wield it, say the experts.

They are self-absorbed, and often become hostile to criticism or even dissent.

Patrick Manning had named himself “Father of the Nation” in his first term as Prime Minister, but toward the end of his final tortured stint, he was, according to Ryan, “dead in the water.”

“Nemesis is closing in on hubris,” Ryan slammed.

Every Tom, Dick and Ferdie Ferreira had damned Manning as being consumed with power, and, according to journalist Tony Fraser, having “an over-blown ego.”

Manning “systemically eliminated all possible opposition to his absolute rule within the PNM,” Fraser said, “and gathered around him sycophants and those without political experience and a base to be able to pose a challenge to his dictatorial rule.”

Indeed, Fraser recalled that Manning had ambitions of becoming the country’s president by attaining the required parliamentary majority.

He was hoping, like Napoleon, to “crown himself emperor.”

That, of course, evokes Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale “The Emperor Has No Clothes” about people’s trepidation in criticising a maximum leader for fear of rebuke and banishment.

These circumstances are more prevalent in the developing world, where institutions and people could more easily be manipulated.

But there was the bare example of Donald Trump in the self-styled greatest country in the world.

In all of this, there is the inevitable question of whether or not those circumstances currently exist in Trinidad and Tobago.

Are there headstrong and absolute leaders who brook no dissension and who reduce associates to dashboard puppies, nodding in detached agreement?

Is democracy being strangled in any or all local political organisations, and, if so, is that stifling the will of the masses?

Are leaders exerting their power to have their way in all things?

In the words of songwriter Bob Dylan, the answer is blowing in the wind.