Sat Ma­haraj

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha was in­cor­po­rat­ed by Act of Par­lia­ment (No 41) in 1952, which makes us 59 years old this year. The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment was found­ed in 1955 by Er­ic Williams, which makes it the old­est po­lit­i­cal par­ty in our coun­try, around 56 years old. On Au­gust 31 we cel­e­brat­ed 49 years of in­de­pen­dence in T&T. The above in­for­ma­tion is giv­en to un­der­score the longevi­ty of our in­sti­tu­tion. Po­lit­i­cal par­ties have been born and died with­in this time frame. Gov­ern­ments have come and gone. The po­lit­i­cal, ge­o­graph­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal land­scape has changed dras­ti­cal­ly since that time, all through which we were a na­tion­al play­er.

In our col­umn two weeks ago, en­ti­tled "State of emer­gency-a le­gal tool," sup­port was giv­en for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this tool to aid in the fight against crime in our coun­try. A three-day mara-thon sit­ting of Par­lia­ment de­bat­ed two mo­tions. The fist dealt with the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the state of emer­gency and the sec­ond sought an ex­ten­sion for a fur­ther three months as pro­vid­ed for in our Con­sti­tu­tion. Both mo­tions were suc­cess­ful­ly passed with ab­solute­ly no op­po­si­tion sup­port. The crux of the de­bate from the Op­po­si­tion bench­es saw on­ly racial and deroga­to­ry com­ments to­wards In­do-Trinida­di­ans and high­ly pop­u­lat­ed In­di­an ar­eas. Joanne Thomas brought the House to up­roar when she said that the dou­bles and sa­heena ven­dors in Pe­nal were mak­ing a liv­ing as nor­mal.

She said, "You know what is strange. I don't know how many of us have been in the Pe­nal area. It is a lit­tle area set aside for dou­bles, sa­heena. They sell­ing now though. They mak­ing a liv­ing, right those ven­dors are mak­ing a liv­ing be­cause there is no cur­few there, right. And if it is you are a car­ing gov­ern­ment, you can't just care for some parts and don't care for the oth­er parts." Wade Mark, Speak­er of the House, was com­pelled to in­ter­vene, mak­ing the point that there should be no racial slurs across the floor from ei­ther side. The Ma­ha Sab­ha asks why is it that a sim­i­lar com­ment was not made about the ven­dors in To­ba­go sell­ing crab and dumplings? There is no cur­few im­posed in To­ba­go so there is "busi­ness as usu­al."

Why was it nec­es­sary to drag race in such a cru­cial and im­por­tant de­bate in our coun­try's na­tion­al his­to­ry? The Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, in his con­tri­bu­tion, iden­ti­fied the sta­tis­tics that showed young black males were high-risk and the sta­tis­ti­cal rea­sons for se­lect­ing the ar­eas placed un­der cur­few. He has re­cent­ly said that se­cu­ri­ty forces are study­ing the da­ta col­lect­ed so far and it is pos­si­ble that oth­er ar­eas may be in­clud­ed as "high risk." The PNM dur­ing all its time in of­fice nev­er sought to ad­dress the spe­cial needs of the African com­mu­ni­ty. It was Dr Kei­th Row­ley who had made the com­ments dur­ing a de­bate in 2003 that Costatt should fo­cus more on young black males. He has now ad­mit­ted that the PNM gov­ern­ment of the time should have had the courage to stand by that pro­gramme.

It was Min­is­ter Dr Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Ford who, while con­tribut­ing to the pri­vate mo­tion brought by the then op­po­si­tion call­ing up­on the gov­ern­ment to op­er­a­tionalise the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion, said: "The need to fo­cus on the needs of some of our young African males is a re­al need. Re­gard­less of how it is framed for it to make it seem dis­crim­i­na­to­ry to any oth­er group, we can­not de­ny this is a vul­ner­a­ble group in the cur­rent painful crime rate." Af­ter such rev­e­la­tions were made and noth­ing ever done to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion, race is the card be­ing played in some par­lia­men­tary de­bates and on a num­ber of "talk" pro­grammes on ra­dio. I ap­plaud Dr Row­ley's punch line: "African youths were over­achiev­ing in the jails and un­der­achiev­ing in the class­rooms."

We must re­mem­ber the words of for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Hilton Guy, who called for per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty: "When you have par­ents prais­ing their un­em­ployed chil­dren who wear­ing $2,000 sneak­ers and every­thing they're wear­ing is a 'brand name' and they come home in the night with a bag of good­ies, the chil­dren you are grow­ing here, you are not on­ly sow­ing the seeds, but fer­til­is­ing the crim­i­nal. Stop blam­ing oth­ers." The PNM has ruled this coun­try for over 40 years. It must take much of the blame for the present sit­u­a­tion. We can­not ig­nore the re­al­i­ty that some of these ar­eas have de­gen­er­at­ed to slums and crime dens.

It was on­ly a few weeks ago that we saw a by-prod­uct of this type of ne­glect from a 14-year-old girl who smeared so­cial me­dia net­works with racist com­ments against the Prime Min­is­ter. Some politi­cians came to her de­fence but the na­tion heard not a word from her par­ents. Afro-Trinida­di­ans are vic­tims of a po­lit­i­cal cul­ture, where politi­cians use peo­ple for votes and then for­get about them un­til the next elec­tion. The "new PNM" should put more ef­fort in­to mak­ing mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tions in the Par­lia­ment rather than try to use racist pro­pa­gan­da that ben­e­fits no one.

• Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the

sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha

THOUGHTS

• The crux of the de­bate from the Op­po­si­tion saw racial and deroga­to­ry com­ments.

• The PNM dur­ing all its time in of­fice nev­er sought to ad­dress the spe­cial needs of the African com­mu­ni­ty.

• The PNM must take much of the blame for the present sit­u­a­tion.