The Frightened Man

I am frightened by the turn of events in the government of this country. Let me tell you why I am frightened. Sometime ago Government agreed to lease Mille Fleurs to the Law Association. Then, a few weeks ago, Government took a decision to retake possession. Lo and Behold! A Permanent Secretary of some Ministry of Government together with a gang of men including the police, went there. One of the men armed with a bolt cutter jumped over the wall, cut the locks from the door and the Permanent Secretary with his gang marched in and took possession of the premises.

Under our law, you do not forcibly retake possession of premises without an Order of the Court. What the Government did was an unlawful act. A trespass, and perhaps a crime, the crime of forcible entry. I will leave it to the practising lawyers to decide whether it was or not. What scares me to death is this. If Government can do this to the Law Association, what will they do to people like you and me? What the Government did was the act of hoodlums. Isn’t that what we call landlords who break down poor peoples’ homes without an Order of the Court? And will we call the responsible Minister and the Permanent Secretary anything less for what they did at Mille Fleurs? Government tries to justify their action by saying that Mille Fleurs was in an advanced state of disrepair and in need of urgent repair. What nonsense! If the matter was so urgent, they could have applied to the Court for an immediate hearing and obtained a Court Order.

I refuse to accept a Government of hoodlums. I refuse to accept this act of hoodlumism. I am sure that there are others who think like me. What happened is unacceptable and we refuse to accept the unacceptable. We demand that the responsible Minister resign. We demand that the Permanent Secretary be disciplined. If they do not, Government is sending a clear message to the hoodlums out there that the policy of the Government is hoodlumism and that they have a free hand to trample over the rights of helpless people. I don’t expect Government to do anything. Like so many times in the past, they will not do the honourable thing. They like the office and the power but they do not like the constitutional principles that undergird that office and power. They have no code of morality.

My code of morality tells me that frightened or not, I must say what I have to say in a time when a creeping darkness of corruption in all its disguised faces is moving across this land of mine. It is my land as it is ours. It is my home as it is yours. Here I live and work and here I will die. And I say to all of us: “Beware! The red light of danger is flashing and men of goodness and that morality of which I speak, must stop... and look... and listen... and act, even if it is only to say — ‘Enough is Enough,”’ even it is only to tell a friend or a neighbour that you do not like what you are seeing. Hoodlumism is the illegal use of power by force. It is the expression of the “wrong is right” philosophy supported by the “we have power.... do what you want” attitude. It is an “ism” that has no place in a participatory democracy. It is the hallmark of the brute. Mille Fleurs is not the first act of hoodlumism that we have seen. The many cases of police brutality with Government standing by and doing nothing effective to stop it, is hoodlumism.

“There are bad eggs in the Police Service,” they cry. “We have no power to discipline them,” they argue. “The Opposition is to blame,” they complain. But the Prime Minister trumpets that executive power belongs to the Government and that the Opposition is trying to sneak in on it. Well Prime Minister, the power is yours. Use it. Find a way to stop this hoodlumism. A respectable young lady, a Public Servant, told me of a terrible experience she went through recently. She gets up about four o’clock on mornings, so that she can reach to work on time to serve the public. She lives alone. About 4.30 am one morning she was in her bathroom. She heard the dogs barking and there was a loud banging on her front door. She wrapped a towel around her and frightened to death, went towards the door. “Who is it?” she managed to squeak out. “Police. Open the door!” a demanding voice replied. She opened the door. Confronting her was “a tall, big man dressed in a dark blue uniform with a bulletproof vest and the biggest gun I have ever seen,” She told me. Behind him were three or four other men all dressed in the same way and all with big guns. “We have a warrant to search your house for cocaine and guns,” said the big man pushing forward and waving “a small piece of paper” in his hand. She stepped back. “Can I see the warrant?” she quavered.

“You will see it just now,” the big man answered. The other men walked past her and started searching her home. Her knees were shaking. She dropped down on a couch. A few minutes passed. She plucked up some courage, stood up and said to the big man — “Can you hold out the warrant so that I can read it?” He ignored her. “Don’t I have the right to see the warrant?” she said. The voice of one of the men behind her snickered — “That is TV thing. They found nothing. They left. In going one of the men said — “We got a call from ‘Crime Stoppers.’ That’s why we here.” But that was not all. Fifteen minutes later a Police Inspector returned with more policemen, this time with police dogs. The young lady was standing outside her home talking with her mother who lives next door. There were several police vehicles on the road and police all over the place, she told me. “I thought you finish,” she said to the Inspector. “We bring dogs this time,” the Inspector replied. And turning to the officer with the dogs he commanded — “Search the house.” They searched again. They found nothing. Can you imagine what this young lady, living alone, went through during the dark hour of that morning? I can.. .and it is frightening. A New Politics will guarantee that incidents like the ones related above do not happen. A New Politics puts the rights of the individual at the top of its Agenda.