Divine right to divide Tunapuna

THE EDITOR: In the face of the bold statement contained within the recent Principles of Fairness admitting of the existence of widespread discrimination and having regard to Justice Deyalsingh’s dictum that “racial discrimination has always been the policy of the PNM” (Newsday October 31, p 10). I wish to comment on the annual Civic and Awards Ceremony held by the PNM-controlled Tunapuna-Piarco Regional Corporation on October 28. Tunapuna has been traditionally, and prides itself, on being an ethnically balanced and harmonious marginal constituency. I want it to be so having had a long association with this piedmont town since 1955. While I must thank the corporation for conferring an award on me at the said ceremony, the corporation’s PNM councillors do not and must not exercise a self-imposed divine right to divide Tunapuna ethnically and alienate and exclude half of the burgesses while still pretending to “leaving no one behind” in typically true deceptive PNM style.

That civic reception infringed all the tenets underlying the compelling need for public entities to be multi-culturally sensitive and responsive at all times in rainbow TT. Why do we the culturally dispossessed and the incrementally-majority-marginalised have to observe and practise eternal vigilance and spend so much time to demand respect and equality when it should have been the prevailing norm since 1956? Why must we make Deyalsingh, a sober, level headed gentleman and jurist, if there was ever one, so seething with anger in his retirement? While I congratulate the corporation for achieving a PNM record 25 to 75 percent ethnic imbalance among the awardees, the evening’s cultural programme was unashamedly Afro-monopolised and deliberately excluded the cultural expressions of half of the burgesses.

And this in the presence of the Acting Prime Minister/Minister of Culture Senator Joan Yuille-Williams and her culture deputy, MP for Tunapuna Eddie Hart. To compound matters further, the prayer that should have been inter-faith was exclusively Pentecostal with the President of the IRO, Rev Cyril Paul in attendance among the awardees. Additionally the corporation’s Week of 12th Anniversary Celebrations featured exclusively calypso and carnival art forms. It telegraphed that the indigenous Indian art forms so abundant, popular and widespread within the corporation were to be marginalised and excluded. I am getting tired and depressed of having to be the plaintiff so often. A Civic Awards Ceremony must transcend political partisanship. It must embrace all shades of cultural interests and political/social aspirations within the corporation.

But my Tunapuna-Piarco Corporation singularly awards Roodal Lalman for long, loyal and devoted service to the PNM and says so openly and unashamedly to the disgust of all the right-thinking. This corporation is conducting its burgesses back to the discriminatory-based era of the 60s rather than forward to the 2020 Vision all-inclusive target. I feel that I have a duty to stop this endemic, ingrained and persistent none-sense. But I am getting tired in my old age. I would have refused my award for Community Service publicly from the corporation were it not for my respect and deep admiration for Senator Joan Yuille-Williams who presented it to me and spoke kindly of me. I want to publicly thank the minister.

STEPHEN KANGAL
Caroni