SEEDS OF RACIAL DISCORD

Several of the prominent members of both of Trinidad and Tobago’s two major ethnic groups have been and are guilty of promoting race in a questionable manoeuvre aimed at influencing voters and potential voters. In turn, there are sections of numerically weaker, but economically stronger ethnic groups stoking the flames of misunderstanding. And this, even with fellow Caricom Member State, Guyana, as a sad example of divisions in the society based on race, where many persons are expected to vote, not on ideology, but on whether their forbears were uprooted from Guinea, Sierra Leone, India, the Gambia or Ghana, and taken there either as slaves or indentured labour.

This (TT’s) former British colonisers may have yielded direct political rule more than 40 years ago, nevertheless the effect of their policy of divide and rule which created deep seated divisions lingers on. It has encouraged, at different times of our country’s history, strident calls by the African National Congress for special treatment for people of, say, Sierra Leonese and Gambian descent, among others, and by the then East Indian National Congress for “proportional or communal representation to which they (the East Indian community) are entitled”.

Today, some 50 years after the African National Congress offered its sad refrain, there are those who still call for special treatment for the descendants of slaves. In turn, almost 85 years after leaders of the East Indian National Congress at a meeting of the Couva Electric Theatre in September of 1921 passed a resolution offering conditional support for Representative Government, ie on condition of proportional or communal representation, there are those today who clamour for proportional representation. Many of today’s leaders are themselves victims, whether consciously or unconsciously, of the long discredited Imperialist policy of divide and rule, marching, however unintentionally, to the beat of the former colonial drummer.

Then there are politicians and would be politicians of almost all of the parties, regardless of their numerical strength, who will cry race even when their protestations are glaringly unjustified. It is of apparent unconcern to them that as exemplars, or in some cases pseudo exemplars what they say may contribute to feelings of insecurity, annoyance, or even rage in lesser educated and/or exposed members of their ethnic group. This applies across the board and includes persons of Gambian, Indian or Ghanaian descent.

All too often there are those who see or affect to see examples of racial discrimination in the appointments of persons to State Boards or promotions of public officials. The situation is not helped when individuals of a supposedly favoured ethnic group join in the cries of race for whatever the reason. It merely blurs the issue.

In the process, what is being done, as a result of the continued protestations of race, is the creating of a mindset in the young and sometimes not so young, who belong to one of the major ethnic groups, that not only their ethnic group per se, but they are as individual members of that ethnic group are being victimised, discriminated against and reserve the right to act in defence of their supposedly denied rights. Politicians and others must understand that while their shouts of ethnic discrimination may be game playing and designed not only to maintain a hold on members but to win over converts to their parties, the less educated members of the community targeted, the rank and file, may be taking them seriously.

It was the late German fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, who wrote in his Mein Kampf: “If you wish the sympathy of broad masses, then you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things.” And while I am not in any way suggesting that any of our politicians can be likened unto Hitler, what I do wish to note here is this, that in times of crisis people can be prone to act unthinkably and recklessly. Trinidad and Tobago can do without reaping the bitter harvest that can come with the sowing of the seeds of racial discord.

I shift gears. Citizens have been bombarded, particularly of late, with references by the cognoscenti to the Separation of Powers of Government, a doctrine first enunciated by the French 18th century constitutional expert, Montes-quieu.

The powers, three in all, are the Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial. It is unfortunate that what politicians and others have not sought to explain to the general public, is that although Montesquieu had in mind the United Kingdom Constitution when he structured his doctrine, nonetheless his Separation of Powers argument, as far as the British Constitution is concerned, was always open to question. I make the point only because Trinidad and Tobago follows the Westminster or British system.