SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF TT

We had a paradise and we lost it. In our diversity we used to live in unity and harmony. It was a time when the divisions of race and religion were not so marked. And then came “progress” and “development.” We were deemed politically “mature.” Or so we deluded ourselves. We were granted “Adult Franchise.” But we were not political adults.

Politicians magnified and exploited the division in our society. Then in the fifties, came to our shores a man who had been educated abroad at our expense and like so many others before and after him, turned his back on the land of his birth. He preened his feathers as an academic and lived in a world divorced from  us, that is, until he was sacked. He returned to us and became a politician. He donned the mantle of “Father of the Nation”’ placed on his shoulders by sycophants. That he never was. He promised us “Morality in Public Affairs.” He promised us there would be no more John John or Shanty Town. We thought he would lead us to the promised land. It has all proved to be a political ruse and a blatant falsehood. After nearly half a century in which his party ruled the political roost, paradise is lost. We have never had more immorality, more poverty, more corruption, more crime.

Today we have imprisoned ourselves in burglar-proofed homes and those who can afford it have moved into the imagined safety of “gated communities.” The others live exposed. The leadership of the Opposition party has led the followers like lemmings over the cliff in a fatal plunge. The Party has been tainted by charges of corruption. The followers still pretend they belong to a party. It is like a headless chicken. Allegations of shocking corruption laid them low. That party is mortally wounded unless it purges itself of any millstones. Their accusers are the same people, one of whom had confessed as a Minister of Government: ‘All ah we tief’. There is an oriental saying that when we point an accusing finger at someone, if we look we shall see three of our fingers pointing to ourselves. But in politics who stops to look? Patrick Manning, like Elisha, thinks the mantle of Elijah has fallen on his shoulders and has declared himself the new ‘Father of the Nation.’ The strange thing is that those who yesterday roared like lions in his party in a bid for leadership have strangely lost their tongue! Fear? Of what or of whom? A Ton Ton Macoute? A Mongoose Gang? What do they fear? Not the Opposition- that has become a political eunuch! The man in the street knows why the challengers and would be Prime Ministers have grown strangely silent. We live in a country full of fear and trembling. Paradise is lost. We live in hell!

A calypsonian who has taken on the well-deserved sobriquet ‘Cro Cro’ an ardent supporter of the PNM, yearly “entertains” his audience with the naked vilification of Indo-Trinidadians — male and female. His utterances fan the fires of racism. The IRO, the Academics and the ‘intellectuals’ of the PNM remain silent! The vulgar crowd applauds! Cro Cro’s latest “contribution” to Art has been the notorious “Face Reality.” Mimicking his political idols, he tells his critics: “Take the evidence to the Police! What evidence?” The vile calypso itself is the evidence. Under the PNM the heinous crime of kidnapping was introduced and the murder rate is frightening. “Incitement” is a common-law offence. “A person incites another to commit an offence if he encourages that other to do what would be an offence if carried out by the person incited.”  Cro Cro advises kidnapping in a land terrified by the almost daily incidents of kidnapping and murder.

‘They kids happy in London, we kids turning pusherman, I begging my bandit friends to kidnap them They have money in London and Miami. Kidnapping go build back the economy.”

He brazenly advocates and incites the kidnapping of those whom he calls corrupt politicians who, he claims, have stolen public funds, and importers of clothes who bring in drugs secreted in their clothes shipment. Does Cro Cro wear a cloak of immunity or invisibility? Is he the anointed mouth-piece of the Government? With apparent impunity he bellows obscenity and incitement!

Newspaper reports say that Ministers of Government, a Professor, and a Mayor were among the audience when Cro Cro belched out this offensive calypso. There was thunderous applause and encores. I am reminded of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” where Casca says: “The rabblement shouted, and clapt their chopt hands, and threw up their sweaty nightcaps, and utter’d such a deal of stinking breath, that it almost choked Caesar; for he swounded, and fell down at it: and for my part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.” When will the Minister of National Security, the Commissioner of Police, the Director of Public Prosecution take the appropriate action? Kidnapping continues apace in our paradise lost! It was in such a situation when in English history, the poor people said: “God and his saints are asleep in heaven.” But I am sure God is awake and seeing. He has a long hand. We are reaping what we have sown — the seeds of racial politics and religious bigotry.

Balgobin Ramdeen,
Attorney-at-Law