No time to politicise

Instead, the matter has not merely become politicised, but racialised (not that the two are ever entirely separate in our society). Unofficial spokespersons for the ruling People’s National Movement have begun touting the line that the bomber has been targeting Afro-Trinidadians. This, they argue, is why the bombs have been planted in Port-of-Spain and St James. But, by this daft reasoning, the young black men who are being killed daily in Laventille and Morvant and Belmont are not dying at the hands of other black young men. The more likely reason — that, in case he is subject to a search, the bomber does not want to risk travelling by vehicle for any great distance with a bomb on his back — is ignored.

We hope it is merely coincidental that this kind of talk started making the rounds just days before Prime Minister Patrick Manning announced in Parliament that the Government had a good idea of who the mastermind behind the bombings was. "Ask yourself who would have an interest in this situation in destabilising the Government of TT? Ask the question," Mr Manning declared.

However, there are two extremely large assumptions behind Mr Manning’s statement. The first is that the bombings are not the acts of a lone sociopath, but a planned campaign. This leads to the second assumption — that the purpose of the campaign is to destabilise the Government.

But in what way do the monthly bombings achieve this? The daily murders have already undermined citizens’ faith in the governance of the Manning administration and, while the bombs certainly exacerbate the situation, almost no one has blamed these acts on Government policy and practices. What the Government has been taken to task for is its incompetence in bringing the bomber to book.

So, in posing his question, Mr Manning has created the conditions where the ignorant in the society will answer that it is the Opposition UNC who are behind the bombings. In response to such allegations, one university lecturer has pointed to the Reichstag fire in Nazi Germany, an event which allowed Hitler to remove all personal liberties in that nation and establish the platform for dictatorship. Ironically, the UWI political scientist got his facts wrong, claiming that it was one of Hitler’s cronies who set the fire and that Jews were blamed. (The fire was actually set by a politically unaffiliated individual as a protest against capitalism and Hitler blamed the Communists.) So it seems that ignorance is extant in quarters both high and low.

Either scenario is quite unlikely, however. It is unlikely, not because such a strategy would be entirely callous and immoral, but because it would be far too risky politically. Such a campaign could not be undertaken without several persons being involved and, as the old saying has it, a secret known to two is no secret. Any political party which supported these bombings would ensure the permanent demise of itself and every politician in its stable if its pla was discovered. We can only urge our politicians to be more circumspect in their statements, to condemn all those who seek to exploit the situation to promote racial agendas, and to remain focused on the nation’s common enemy: the person or persons who have been planting the bombs. To do anything else is to fling powder at an already dangerous fire.