Beware onset of disillusionment

I also agree, entirely, with the declaration by Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi, as he introduced debate on the Bail Amendment Bill 2017, that the delay in justice is very, very expensive for the people of Trinidad and Tobago; although I suspect he and I have a different thought in mind as to the nature of the expense.

Mr Griffith was objecting to a documentary, Caribbean to Caliphate, produced by Al Jazeera and broadcast globally last week that seeks to understand why this small island in the Caribbean could be churning out such a relatively high number of people — men, women and children from various walks of life — who are willing to risk theirs lives in the search for a truer way of life.

Where Mr Griffith and I part ways is on the short shrift he gives in his interview within the documentary to the underlying factors that drive people towards antisocial behaviour.

Al Jazeera concludes that there is no one explanation, but in Trinidad and Tobago one finds a fertile ground for ISIL recruitment, “a rich mix of violence, marginalisation and disillusionment.” Some may argue that our international infamy really began to pick up with the execution of Dole Chadee and his cohorts. A documentary entitled The Execution of Cocaine Chadee described the country, in 1993, as having “the fastest growing murder rate in the world.” For another documentary entitled Guns, Drugs and Secrets, it was the declaration of the 2011 state of emergency that peaked the interest of a series called Unreported World. In this documentary, the presenter observes a situation in which, despite widespread knowledge that gang warfare was being driven by higher-level corruption, “street-level criminals are the main focus of the state of emergency; little black boys used as pawns.” A police officer tells stories of corruption amongst his colleagues and the Minister of National Security at the time, Mr Griffith himself, argues that “we needed a state of emergency to protect law-abiding citizens of the country from getting killed” but that it could not address corruption, which, he said, was the domain of the criminal justice system.

In responding to a question about the poor government response, the late hero of the streets, peacebuilder Hal Greaves, tells the interviewer, “The government is not powerless, just not focused.” What is interesting about the earlier documentaries and the more recent Al Jazeera expos? on this country, is how little has changed by way of government policy. The current Attorney General, like his predecessor some administrations ago, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, is advocating a tightening and strict application of the laws of the land in response to the worsening violence and crime.

In fact, the two are working together now to reintroduce hangings, a strategy that clearly did not have the desired lasting impact when employed by Mr Maharaj in relation to Chadee and his cohorts back in 1999.

Mr Griffith may wish to direct his embarrassment at foreign journalists for exposing the underbelly of this country. He will be no different than many other happy-golucky Trinidadians who, in their nationalistic pride, choose not to see deeper.

However, in the meantime there are “street-level” people for whom the situations described in these documentaries are real. People experiencing everyday kinds of real things like the spectre of impunity, the injustice of corruption, frustrating delays in justice and the unequal spread of the burden of economic adjustments (real or imagined).

We have only ourselves to blame for the ugly realities that the rest of the world finds so interesting to study.