If not one thing, it’s another

THE EDITOR: In this neck of the woods, when it’s not one thing it’s another. When it’s not Basdeo Panday it’s Patrick Manning. And so it goes on and on — ad infinitum, if not ad nauseam. To start with Bas and his histrionics: Reminds me of Spoiler’s classic, where a magistrate was charged for speeding. But being the only magistrate in the district, it was incumbent on him to try himself. No problem. The magistrate simply looked into a mirror and proceeded to try the case. How? Himself told himself, “You are charged with speeding.” Himself replied, “The policeman lying.” To cut a long story short, Himself found himself “guilty as charged” and gave him the option of a small fine or the slammer. Now even the prince of fools could have told him that “jail ain’t nice,” and, in any case, there was always little Jack Horner to pick up the tab.

But when a fellow is determined to “make ah jail fur dem” and dominate “the news of the day” for some imagined ol’ fame then there’s no stopping him. Now I’m not about trivalising Mr Panday’s predicament. In my view, Mr Panday doesn’t need any help in that department. He has made it difficult for those who find Mr Manning politically wanting and seeming like Mr Panday to be occupying parallel universes to their own to see him as a viable alternative. In my view, they are both obsessed with an inflated sense of their own importance. Mr Manning has our money to spend — oodles of it — and no doubt persuades himself that the national patrimony is just an imaginary extension of “Patrick money,” as some mischievous wag put it. Mark my word, you can get up any morning and find out that “we the people” have been financially committed to some harebrained, grandiose project — thereby turning priorities on the head — with some self-serving idiots or groups publicly swearing to the wisdom of feasibility of Manning’s “brain wave.”

To be fair, it ought to be pointed out that Basdeo Panday is not the only one who engages in political histrionics and political gimmickry, although he appears to have run his course. What, pray, do you make of PM Patrick Manning making heavy weather of his Government’s invitations to three Presidents of Africa, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda, to join in this year’s Emancipation celebrations. Could that be the same Patrick Manning who on the hustings and in response to ANR Robinson’s promise to accommodate a very limited number of Haitian refugees, blurted out, at Laventille of all places, that if he formed the government “not a single Haitian refugee would be accommodated in this country?” If you think that I’ve made this up, ask Khafra Kambon, who cried shame on such a response from a TT politician.

Another thought that comes to mind — and that did not involve Manning — is the protest on the part of some individuals to an invitation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu to be an official guest just before an impending general election. I believe that the visit was quite correctly deferred. Mr Manning’s suggestion was that the invitations to the African Presidents could be used to see how diversification could be a means of promoting unity. that balderdash! Manning, in my humble view, is simply playing politics and pandering to local “African” susceptibilities. The politicians — all of them — have debased and devalued the trite “unity in diversity” mantra and don’t seem to have a clue what it means and how it can be attained.

In the same newspaper report, Manning is quoted as saying that his Government will never support “proportional representation” as it will not help in bringing about unity in the country. Panday is adamant about “proportional representation.” I don’t presume to know what goes on in people’s heads, especially political heads. However, I suspect that Panday hopes that, given proportional representation, Indo-Trinis would vote as a block and he sees himself as their “undisputed leader.” The fact of the matter is that “proportional representation” could well break open the “ethnic prisons” and destabilise the ethnic hegemony that has been produced by the manipulation of ethnic fears and insecurities, real and/or imagined.

SHARON GEORGE
St Augustine