It’s still baby talk to me

On Monday September 29, 2003, a presidential proclamation will declare the Red House, the place where the Second Session of the Eighth Parliament of  the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago shall convene. On that day, President Max Richards is also expected to give his maiden address in the legislature, during which he will seek to convey to the congress and to the country, the civilised nation; he desires them and us to mould. If the President is passionately eloquent, the Republic’s people, within and without the Red House, will be elevated by his discourse, to a fantasy world in which Trinidad and Tobago is a real country. Many of us may try to linger up there on cloud Max for as long as we can after the President finishes his speech. However, no words, not even the Head of State’s will be uplifting enough to keep us — citizen or representative — buoyant for long. Not these days.

Once the President’s oratory job is complete, the legislators of the Balisier Government and of the UNC non-Opposition — the party whose acronym is now farcical for it is neither united, national nor a congress — will descend to their dead baby talk, to their flavourless, crass debates. They will not pay their constituents the respect to lead us at least by word, if they cannot by deed. The paint on the aged parliamentary chamber walls will flake more, as these cringe at the language of those they contain. The task of making the President’s dream words a reality will be left to his Independent nine. Outside the Red House, life after the President’s speech will be as tasteless as it will be within the Chamber, but not as dull. We, the people of the President’s Republic, will continue to soak in the pools of our blood and of our tears, as our youths are slain in the hills and the corpses of our slaughtered kidnapped kin dumped on the plains. We will watch the murder toll climb faster than the police can draw their weapons and we shall feel
helpless.

Gang battles for control of drug blocks or of State patronage will continue unabated as one youth with a gun, steps in to fill the shoes of his peer whose bare feet now lie tagged in the morgue. Kidnappers, old, new or recycled, will coldly target and stalk their next victim. It will be as perilous to be affluent as it is to be impoverished. The illicit drug trade, run from way above on high by god knows who and by some very rich devils, will keep on thriving while its users and street peddlers are arrested by policemen who appear to specialise only in observing suspicious behaviour “while on patrol.” And as, to no avail, we grab our mops and tissues to erase the stain and the pain of the murders and abductions and as we pray to our gods to make us less afraid, in the Houses of Parliament, men and women will point fingers at each other, unashamedly seeking to assign blame. They will then pass new laws, both good and bad, and outside the Red House, most of us shall infringe even the least of the old statutes and rules. We, no matter our societal class will run over pedestrians at zebra crossings, break red lights, park in no parking zones. We will, many of us, buy our driver’s permit.

We, the nation’s mothers and fathers will protest violence in schools by lighting fires and then wonder why our children belong to gangs and not to book clubs. We will go on teaching our offspring that the blaze, the gun or the cutlass is mightier than the tongue or the brain, that wrong and strong is right. We will curse our neighbours, kill them if they aren’t careful. We will hit our spouses, if we do not stab, chop or choke the life out of them. Inside the Red House after September 29 2003, we will hear boasts from each side of their dedication to consultation, justice, peace, equity, transparency, to new paradigms and well-worn clich?s. Outside the House, we will soon know the boasting was just good Trini mamaguy, for we will still not be entirely convinced that the administration’s various housing projects are not another form of voter padding, not when the relevant Minister refuses to face the media. We will continue to question the hypocrisy of a Prime Minister, who once ignored repeated calls for him to relinquish his post of party leader, now telling others at what age to retire. We will still be unsure that the gas boom benefits will reach us all. We shall not believe that any government knows how to stem the rising red tide.

We will curse and criticise our leaders for their false promises, and lack of transparency. Yet, as we swear, we, the civilians, shall still seek to make of the simplest transaction a corrupt deal, an occasion for offering a bribe, for short-circuiting any and every system. And as we express further horror at the base level of parliamentary debates — as if we went into the polling stations blindfolded — we know that what we have seen during the lifetime of the First Session of the Eighth Parliament of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is what we shall get in its Second. Inside the House and outside the Red House walls. Despite the best efforts of President Max to transform us with lofty words, we, the legislators and the people, will moments later, return to the languages we prefer speaking and we understand best: Old talk, gun talk and baby talk.
Suzanne Mills is the Editor
of the daily Newsday.