Damage to country’s image

Statements continue to be made by high profile citizens, inimical to the country’s interests and without supporting evidence, and which clearly they should appreciate do immeasurable harm to the country’s regional and international image. Only recently, Fyzabad Member of Parliament, Chandresh Sharma, was quoted as saying in Parliament in the course of the debate on the Anti-Terrorism Bill that the telephones of judges and Opposition MPs were being tapped into by the police. Mere days earlier, another MP, Dr Roodal Moonilal, Parliamentary Representative for Oropouche, had charged in the House that Government planned to place the Chief Justice of Trinidad and Tobago, Sat Sharma, under house arrest. Moonilal, apparently not content, went further and urged persons living in the same street as the CJ to stock up on coconut water and canned foods.

If Moonilal had available evidence that Government planned to place the CJ under house arrest he did not produce it during the debate in the House, which would have been the appropriate time. What he should have understood is that there are some sections of the international print and electronic media which are always willing to pounce on and blow up any statements and/or  incidents which put Third World countries in unflattering positions. And when these have not been readily available they will either manufacture stories or cynically twist information that has been passed on to them in an effort to titillate their readers and encourage certain perceptions, however misconceived. I know this from experience.

But it is one thing for some of these international publications to be dismissive of Third World nations. It is another for nationals of these countries to provide fodder for them, however unintentionally, to expand their audiences on the basis of statements, I almost said information, unsupported by evidence. What may be regarded by some here as harmless picong, all part of the cut and thrust of domestic politics, will be taken by some of the international media as the gospel, in this case according to “Saint” Roodal and “Saint” Chandresh. Let us return to Sharma’s unamusing absurdity and later to Moonilal’s. They must be considered absurd because having been uttered in the House with its cloak of Parliamentary immunity, why then did Sharma, for example, not expand on his charge of the tapping of telephones of judges and Opposition Members of Parliament.  Why did he not quote specific cases of the violating of the privacy of MPs. 

Had his telephone, for example, been tapped?  If so, how had he been made aware of this and on how many occasions had this been done?
Admittedly, had the telephones of judges been tapped Sharma may have considered the public revealing of individual cases to have been insensitive as this may have been construed by some persons to mean that there were judges, who had been in contact with an Opposition MP on matters properly drawn to the attention of the Chief Justice. Of course, there would have been another side to the violation of privacy equation, and that is that what may be inferred from Sharma’s statement is that either he was briefed by police officers or by persons close to police officers.

Did Sharma, for example, bring the alleged telephone tapping to the attention of the authorities? Indeed, Sharma had an excellent opportunity to protest electronic invasion of privacy when, in the late 1990s, the United National Congress government was reported to have installed high tech surveillance equipment at the Twin Towers costing millions of dollars which, it is reported, enabled the monitoring of telephone calls not only in Trinidad and Tobago, but in Venezuela and every Caribbean country, as well as on ships which were operating as far as thousands of miles away. The equipment, I was told at the time, had been purchased from Israel.

Try as I will I cannot recall the name of the person who briefed me and had provided me at the time with a great deal of confidential information. 
I had stated earlier that some of the international media would not only pounce on negatives of this country and other Third World countries, but would distort news material forwarded to them. I believe I owe my readers an explanation.  Many years ago when I was a young reporter with the Trinidad Guardian I would, on request, supply the Trinidad and Tobago correspondent for an international news agency and an internationally read magazine with material for articles. In addition, I would fully brief him. On occasion, where the material was of a particularly sensitive nature I would be provided with the written material to vet before the cable was dispatched.  Sometimes I would draft the cables.

Imagine my surprise, when, over a period of time, on reading articles published in the internationally read magazine for which I had not merely supplied the information, but actually drafted word for word the cabled articles to discover that the material had been cruelly distorted! The end result was that I refused to read that magazine for 20 years, as well as not allow it into my home so that its clear distortion of events, with which I was only too familiar, could in no way condition the thinking of my children and make them feel any less of their country and its people. This is purely a word of advice to Messrs Sharma (Chandresh) and Moonilal and to political leader of the United National Congress, Basdeo Panday, and chairman of the Party, Wade Mark as well. At the end of the day, Trinidad and Tobago is our country.