Such dangerous nonsense

This is precisely the kind of dangerous nonsense that the country needs to do without. Regrettably, however, it is driving a lot of the responses to what is essentially a crisis of the colonial institutions of state. Martin Daly last week commented that the real issue which confronts us is whether or not we have a system which dispenses justice for all or whether we have a system that gives justice to the privileged elite - the rich and powerful. In my column last week I made the same point.

Mr Panday in an obvious attempt to shore up his party’s political base in light of the ongoing internal conflict between his faction and the Dookeran faction, has invoked the race card in the CJ issue. In order for his political survival he has to demonise the PNM as “racist” and therefore appeal to Indo-Trinidad to close ranks against the “racists.” The fact that the Chief Justice is Indian and the Prime Minister, Attorney General and Commissioner of Police African, is politically convenient. One plus one equals two. For Mr Panday nothing else matters. Similarly for the former Attorney General, Mr Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, the man who swore that it was his responsibility to bring down the corrupt Panday-led UNC, but who now calls on Mr Panday to come back into the party’s leadership as “only with Panday can we beat the PNM.”

But this is not all that Ramesh has seemingly conveniently forgotten. When he was AG he had a terrific battle with the then Chief Justice Michael de la Bastide. The CJ used various opportunities including the Opening of the Law term to make public what he believed was an unbridled attempt by the Executive (Cabinet) to interfere with the independence of the Judiciary. Specific allegations were made by both sides.

Then Prime Minister Panday also went on the offensive against the Judiciary (including the Privy Council on the matter of hanging) and suggested that it was against the UNC. The conflict even led to a Commission of Enquiry into the Judiciary. At that time the Law Association led by Karl Hudson Philips supported, not the Judiciary, but the Executive. Did Mr Maharaj believe then that because the Judiciary was under attack by the Executive there was a concerted effort to destroy democracy? Clearly not. Similarly, the PNM thought that there was then, but not now.

This double-speak and hypocrisy by the politicians needs to be ignored by us all if we are to make sense out of the present crisis. It also seems that we need to ignore many of the statements by members of the legal profession. For example, it is to me a definite conflict of interest for Russell Martineau to be one of the Chief Justice’s lawyers and sit as Chairman of meetings of the Law Association, which meetings are dealing with the CJ issue! And yet he calls others “little men.” I think he needs to look at the beam in his own eye before he seeks to take out the splinter in the eyes of others!

The issue has to be the nature of the system. The judicial system in this country was created by the British colonial Government in collaboration with the planter class in order to “deal” with the fall-out from Emancipation. Prior to 1834 the country had no more than six policemen, and not much of a court system.

In 1838 the number of policemen increased to more than 40, six police districts were established and in each there was a police station equipped with a lock-up and serviced by a stipendiary Justice of the Peace and a Court. The message was clear. Before emancipation each plantation was able to address issues of “law and order,” but with the former slaves now being able to leave the jurisdiction of the plantation, another jurisdiction needed to be created. Our lower Courts (Magistrate’s Courts) are today still caught up in the culture of the old “police courts,” with conditions not in keeping with notions of justice, but rather of oppression. Just look at who is there on a daily basis — be they prisoner, relatives or witnesses — and you will see that it is the working classes and poor that occupy those courts. And until the recent changes in the Rules of Civil Proceedings, the High Court really functioned far more in the interest of the wealthy and powerful than in the interest of the small man and woman. We have, therefore, never truly had justice for all.

The same is true of the system of governance, with decisions being taken by the Executive without the input of the citizenry or of what is now called civil society — the people’s organisations.

As has been said, you spend five minutes in a polling booth once every five years and place your X on the ballot, dip your finger in the ink and then transfer power to someone else, who then turns around and uses that power against you who put them there. And in our system, those who voted for the party that ends up in Opposition, feels doubly disenfranchised as they believe that only the supporters of the winners will get positions or other benefits of office. As the Constitution Reform Forum has said, it is a “winner take all” system.

I want to clarify this further because, in my view, the winning party also excludes its own “supporters” from the real fruits of power/office. Sure, the poor supporters may get more allocations of URP or CEPEP, but is this real power? No! Or, the professionals who supported may get Board appointments and the like, but what does this mean in terms of real resources being transferred to the poor? Very little really! On the other hand there are some who play the PIP (party in power) card, so they stay in positions regardless of who wins the elections. So our system is one of exclusion of the majority by the minority elite.

We therefore need to transform the system of governance and break-up all the old institutions of the state. These colonial institutions became our post-independence institutions but at root they are still colonial.

What needs to replace them? Without trying to offer a blueprint I suggest that in terms of the political decision-making (governance) we need to have a philosophical approach which sees the importance of placing real power in people’s hands. Power where people live and power where people work should guide us. This means real power in the community — in the village and community councils and in local government, with persons elected to those bodies on a non-partisan basis.