Unilateralism is replacing democracy

THE EDITOR: The style of governance adopted to introduce into Parliament current legislation geared to reign in the crime of kidnapping for ransom and other related offences is symptomatic of the creeping unilateralism that is dangerously assuming precedence over and replacing our culture of parliamentary democracy.

Both the Government and Opposition stand irresponsibly accused of failing to adhere to the requisite consultative/collaborative/in-the-national-interest approach on the Kidnapping Bill. This approach is conditional to effective governance in TT and constitutes the sine qua non to enacting all urgent constitutional rights infringing, three-fifths majority legislation, having regard to the current and future political configuration of the Lower House.

There is no need to inflict on TT out-dated, cheap, sterile and bankrupt politicking because we are not impressed. The Bill is a watered down, toothless version of an original Bill that was re-drafted to circumvent the Government having to mobilise the requisite special majority for passing those critical constitutional human rights infringing sections of the Bill. The original deterrent, no-bail provision that would have rendered it more effective in stemming the tide of kidnapping has regrettably been excised.

This Bill will not achieve its deterrent effects unless and until frequent arrests are made. We should be cautiously optimistic into believing that this Bill (i.e. the legislative approach) is the panacea to ridding TT of the menace of kidnapping or what should be more appropriately regarded as the illicit and inhumane trade in innocent but selected human lives.

The kidnapping menace is not only holding segments of our society under siege but is being conducted at a galloping pace without any let, respite or hindrance in sight. Sixty five have been committed with impunity so far and counting. This crime against our society has now targeted and encroached on the young and innocent (five children have been kidnapped so far this year out of a total of 65 kidnappings (27 in 2002) and 60 murders (171 in 2002)). The Police have laid kidnapping charges only in one of the 65 incidents although they boast of a 30 percent detection ratio. The kidnappers are collecting ransom ($1.7mn for 2003) money as if it were sou sou money. At least 100 telephone calls demanding ransoms would have been made, but none has been intercepted in the face of the $60m spent in acquiring Israeli-made spying/ surveillance/ monitoring communications technology.

This sordid development has serious long-term adverse consequences for the full flowering and mobilisation of the innate human resource enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit endemic in all our peoples.  If this trend escalates, we might well become the crime/kidnapping capital of the Caribbean, rather than a developed country by 2020. Kidnapping is taking place in the face of public disclosures reported recently in the media and attributed to the Police Commissioner, that he was fully aware of the cabal of underworld persons who were perpetrating the nefarious crime of kidnapping. On the other hand, and in a contradictory vein, we have had statements by the Honourable PM Manning linking kidnappings to political considerations. The latest explanation is that kidnapping is motivated by money considerations (AG Morean) and not ethnicity (meaning Indians) or both.

The misleading message being telegraphed is that only Indians have money in TT. What of the Chinese brothers as well as the mercantile French Creole,  the affluent Africans and the rich Syrian-Lebanese? Are they insulated from kidnappings by guns and guards? Not only is the Government unwilling to admit of an escalating crime problem but in the face of overwhelming statistical data ( more than 66 percent), it is reluctant to admit empirically and dispassionately that Indians first and foremost are being targeted for kidnappings. The Government has a moral duty to ask as well as to find out why? One must first recognise and admit of the existence of various  permutations/dimensions of the kidnapping problem at the initial  hypothetical level and then proceed to investigate it dispassionately. In  this regard it is critically important to determine whether the kidnapping  selection criteria are, inter alia, identical to the banditry/burglary  pandemic. Accordingly, one may wish to focus on the variables of ethnicity, prosperity, geography (locational theory), the culture of passivity (fight or flight), extra-specific non-aggression, the culture of ostentatiousness or wealth visibility, demographics (density and distribution) or low security awareness or consciousness.

The aforementioned contradictory explanations given at the highest levels for the spate of kidnappings must certainly leave the segmented kidnapped community deliberately confused, helpless and vulnerable as well as provide fodder for the kidnapping underworld.  What am I to make of the latest pronouncement that the police were doing their best to arrest the kidnapping menace and yet it is galloping out of control. Should the victims throw their hands in the air, surrender to the plunderers and the perpetrators of the law of the jungle or migrate from their homeland (the classical flight response)? On this important piece of legislation, i.e. The Kidnapping Bill, as well as others that may be geared to provide teeth to our statutes, both the  Government and Opposition are quite intent on scoring political points  "a.k.a kicksing", cheap politicking, while Dharti Mai TT burns and the heart  and soul of our peoples, including our young darlings of democracy are being  traumatised and assaulted beyond rehabilitation.

STEPHEN KANGAL
East Croydon
England