Prof sees US parallel to TT elections

This similarity arose from his question whether TT really did havve a society in the classical sense as represented under Section 53 in our Constitution which stated that the Parliament and the Government have a duty to ensure peace, order and good governance for the good of the country.

He said Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, who had been running a hard hitting below-the belt-campaign against Democrat representative and a former first lady of the US Hillary Clinton, knew that substantial sections of the American community had lost faith in their institutions, had lost confidence. The campaign has been rife with accusations from email scandals to sexual slander.

“They are filled with fear and frustration and he has come in with some slogans and positions that perhaps quite surprisingly have attracted thousands of people across the US. You can make a moral judgement, but politically it has been a strategic move that when your institutions fail, it leaves for awakening our prejudices, fears and frustrations and mobilise these things into the political arena,” he said.

Deosaran was the feature speaker yesterday at a Port-of-Spain Rotary luncheon, Fitzblackman Drive, Woodbrook.

He said many people were predicting that Clinton was the better choice for president but seeing early figures, and knowing how politics worked, it would be of no surprise if Trump won.

“If he does win it will tell us an interesting story about democratic politics and what happens when a national community begins to be fearful and to feel frustrated.

Any number can play. On the other hand, Hillary is promising and expressing hopes, so it is really a clash between two worlds of the democratic community. “But, whether Trump loses it will be hard evidence as to what happens to a national community when the institutions lose public confidence and faith. It is therefore a warning sign, a mild optimism that we can do better,” Deosaran said.

He said while all other institutions in TT were subsidiary in implementing the constitutional pledge, at the same time what we had in the society was a betrayal and a subversion of the core backbone values that keep a country together.

“Amongst those values are the respect for personal safety, private property, civility in public life... all those values are now broken and fractured. I am making these remarks not out feelings of despair, but of hope that we can change the course that country seems to be heading towards, he said.

Deosaran said there were several public safety institutions in TT– the Judiciary, Police Service, Prisons Service, Director of Public Prosecutions, Police Service and Public Service Commission, even the Teachers Service Commission –but these institutions had become broken for many years. “If our public safety institutions, critical as they are, the fractures and ineffectiveness for several reasons are quite pervasive, we have to ask, as citizens, do we really have a society.

“When you have these vacuums in a society it leaves room for demagoguery, vigilante purposes where every man feels he must take care of himself and family in ways that are not completely legal giving rise to vigilantism. Sometimes I wonder if the shootings and killings we are witnessing on a daily basis are really revenge killings, and the loss of faith and confidence in the institutions that look after victims and people who feel injured by perpetrators of one kind or the other,” Deosaran said.