THE LESSON OF IRAQ

Our pleasant journey to Port-of-Spain via the hills of Diego Martin, now verdant after the rainy season, had been brought to an abrupt halt. The obstacle in our path was a backhoe squatting across the narrow serpentine road, spitting cement out onto the left side of the road. It looked like an extraordinarily fat metallic yellow frog sitting on an asphalt toadstool.

Now what? There had been no sign to warn us that work was taking place ahead, that the road’s exit was temporarily cut off by this beast. No police barriers, nothing. My companion looked embarrassed in his driver’s seat: this alternative route to my doctor’s office had been his idea. It was a good one because the drive through the scenic trail had indeed been invigorating, that is, until the emergence in our picturesque path of this wart of a backhoe, its operator and an accompanying crew of five men — two covering a WASA pipe with cement while the other three supervised.

My friend and I waited to see if the backhoe’s operator would clunk his machinery a few metres down the road so we could get by. It was not an unreasonable proposition because there, on his immediate left horizon, the road widened enough to accommodate both his vehicle and ours. In addition, if all five men would spread the cement, the backhoe would not have to be at a standstill. Both driver and crew ignored us. My friend tapped the car horn lightly with his right index, a couple of non aggressive beeps. He was clearly reluctant to rile an apparently unfriendly lot. His effort at diplomacy was lost on the men. Those on the road glared at us and steupsed, making no effort to mask their irritation at the sound of the car horn. The backhoe operator, stone-faced, kept looking ahead, refusing to acknowledge our tooted petition. My companion pressed on the horn again and this time the resulting sound was longer and louder. “Wait till we done!” the road crew yelled in indignant response, five right hands raised simultaneously in harmony with the barked instruction.

The backhoe operator glanced over his left shoulder at us, just long enough to give us a look of unadulterated contempt. “They can’t be serious,” my friend said. “With the length of pipe they have left to cover we will have to sit here for at least 30 minutes.” “You think they care about us?” I asked him. “This country is in big trouble,” was his reply. “Everyone does what he wants.” And he added: “Now what if some bad boys came driving along and decided they were not taking this. This is how trouble starts.” I agreed with all his observations. I especially embraced the image of a 9mm and not a car horn being used to persuade the driver to move his backhoe. I could see the insolent, indolent yellow toad turn into an apologetic, busy bumblebee and fly down the road to make way for the bad boy car. I’m ashamed to admit that it was not unpleasant at all to imagine these WASA bullies punished for making of us, and of the law, huge asses. But such thoughts were, as my friend said, where the trouble in this country started. Wrong and strong begat more wrong and strong, ignorance led to violence and TT was becoming a war zone. To survive, people had to be the baddest, toughest, wrongest. The law was increasingly irrelevant.

Never mind it was illegal to block a public road like this crew was doing. They were big. Moreover, they were part of government and in the new George W Bush world order, administrations broke the law and took away people’s basic human rights. In that car on that Diego Martin road, we sat as helplessly as the United Nations had when the US invaded Iraq. The message of Iraq — that those in government could break the law on the flimsiest of pretexts — had not been lost on many, if on any. Those living in the islands of the Caribbean Basin, perhaps because of their closer proximity to George W Bush, would have heard his message better. It certainly seemed as if our Prime Minister had got the point.

Bush had marched into Iraq allegedly to install democracy and to uproot weapons of mass destruction. The illegal means he employed justified the ends, which were laudable according to the US leader, even if the rest of the world deemed his motives questionable. Thus, TT’s Patrick Manning could equally justify his decision to allocate the restored Red House to himself by pointing to a leaking Whitehall roof.  It was Patrick practising Bushism. The Prime Minister had the power to grab the Red House, so he was using this power arbitrarily, irrationally and certainly against the wishes of most of the population. Manning wanted to look out over Woodford Square, father of all he surveyed, at any cost. The price however, was too dear because what this society needed was an example of humble and fair leadership, not more displays of petulant and bullying management.

When we elected the first type of people, not the second set, perhaps then these six men might understand that being government workers gave them no more rights than the rest of us. As I sat thinking about this all, I realised I had a decision to make about this column’s title. Was it not sheer folly to continue to name it “No Red House for Manning” in 2004? Was not the PM’s throne in the Red House guaranteed? Who was I to tell a man with the clout of our mini Westminster Prime Minister to leave the Parliament alone? What was more, Patrick Manning had rubbed shoulders with George W Bush in Washington DC. The only shoulders I rubbed were mine and these, only when they were sore. The PM was a man positioned atop countless cubic feet of natural gas, which probably explained his constant bursting bubbles. On what did I sit but a few square feet of land with some fruit trees? And these had blight. It was also party season in TT and many could care less about their Parliament.

Indeed, if they were as fervent over the country’s congress as they were about Carnival, Manning might never have had the cheek to talk about leaks. While the nation drank, wined and waved their rags, their legislature’s staff would be quietly evicted. It could be no coincidence that the Cabinet decision had been made just before Christmas. Cynicism was the name of the political game. I decided not to tamper with the heading of the Sunday column. Why should I give up the fight even if the column’s name had not and could not convince our great Prime Minister to abandon his narcissistic dream? “No Red House for Manning” would stay. Who knew? Given the bloody and fiery history of the building, even if the Prime Minister got his ultimate wish, my title might well prove fatalistic. Suzanne Mills is the Editor of Newsday.