Richard Ra­moutar

What was the in­tent and rel­e­vance be­hind the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter's state­ment about per­ceived al­le­ga­tions of eth­nic dis­crim­i­na­tion in the grant­i­ng of schol­ar­ships to needy and de­serv­ing stu­dents dur­ing her bud­getary state­ments-es­pe­cial­ly when (a) the re­port was not ful­ly com­plet­ed as ev­i­denced by the state­ments of Prof John La Guerre, chair­man of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion and (b) whether or not the PM was in pos­ses­sion of these ap­pli­ca­tions and, per­haps, the pro­file and pho­tos of each ap­pli­cant? Could it be that it was planned that way as a di­ver­sion­ary tac­tic and smoke­screen from pas­sion­ate is­sues sur­round­ing the bud­get as she pre­pared to go to Aus­tralia?

Ours is a blessed coun­try, with a mi­ni Unit­ed Na­tions com­po­si­tion of all races and eth­nic­i­ty, where equal and fair op­por­tu­ni­ty for all should ex­ist as is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly man­dat­ed and not a priv­i­lege to be used by Gov­ern­ment to di­vide and rule. To what ex­tent should the pop­u­la­tion en­dorse and ac­cept all of the Gov­ern­ment's dis­clo­sures and de­ci­sions, es­pe­cial­ly when per­haps the in­ter­ests of a se­lect few take prece­dence over the mass­es, even though the po­lit­i­cal name is the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship? How much of the na­tion's peo­ple is con­sult­ed by the Part­ner­ship? How can one jus­ti­fy that on­ly 7 per cent of schol­ar­ships were grant­ed to East In­di­ans when names in Trinidad and To­ba­go can be very com­plex?

For ex­am­ple, names like Su­san Fran­cois, Lar­ry Browne, Jen­nifer Hazel­wood, Al­fon­so Thomas, Ren­wick Bac­chus, Dugald Lewis, Con­rad Thomas, Er­rol Fur­longe, An­gela Phillip, Don Mur­ray, Hen­ry Joseph, Mike Hen­ry are all of cit­i­zens of East In­di­an de­scent; and what hap­pens when chil­dren of mixed parent­age car­ry their ma­ter­nal names which can be Thomp­son, Cheng, Bruce, and much more. Would it not have been more pru­dent for her spe­cial ad­vis­ers to cau­tion her un­til the en­tire re­port was pub­lished and al­so ven­ti­lat­ed in the court of pub­lic opin­ion? There needs to be prop­er con­sid­er­a­tion and re­li­able ev­i­dence to sus­tain these state­ments. On the oth­er hand, it is my hum­ble opin­ion that there may be a par­al­lel SoE de­vel­op­ing in this coun­try that deals with the grow­ing cri­sis in gov­er­nance, trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, ethics, moral­i­ty and in­tegri­ty?

Is the PP Gov­ern­ment will­ing and able to con­front this emerg­ing state of emer­gency (SoE) as it may be re­lat­ed to se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of kick­backs and du­bi­ous ed­u­ca­tion­al cre­den­tials? Giv­en the volatil­i­ty of the econ­o­my, in­creas­ing un­em­ploy­ment, the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty land­scape, and the grad­ual emerg­ing pic­ture of a na­tion strug­gling un­der duress and so­cial pres­sures, such state­ments should nev­er be pub­li­cised with­out a jus­ti­fi­able ba­sis, as they are prej­u­di­cial to na­tion­al uni­ty. Fur­ther­more, these state­ments can on­ly serve to cre­ate much more chal­lenges than an­tic­i­pat­ed. If the state­ments of the Ho­n­ourable PM were de­signed to cast as­per­sions on eth­nic dis­crim­i­na­tion, is it dif­fer­ent un­der her ad­min­is­tra­tion?

Then why does some of her lead­ing of­fi­cials asked mem­bers of the pub­lic about their po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance and loy­al­ty? In re­view­ing the short his­to­ry of the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion, there are in­stances when the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter may have veered in that di­rec­tion. As such, the Ho­n­ourable PM and her ad­min­is­tra­tion must be re­mind­ed of the lack of full dis­clo­sure in the as­cen­sion of Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine to tem­po­rary of­fice as head of the SSA. The ap­par­ent lack of full dis­clo­sure may sug­gest that this spe­cif­ic ap­point­ment had all the top­pings and in­gre­di­ents of se­lec­tive eth­nic dis­crim­i­na­tion, ed­u­ca­tion­al fraud, with per­haps the nexus of ap­par­ent po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty and pay­back. When con­front­ed with per­se­ver­ing and de­ter­mined ques­tions on the mat­ter, the Ho­n­ourable PM in her me­dia dis­clo­sure told the na­tion: "Let's move on."

Ef­fec­tive­ness of SoE on TOC

One does not know whether the na­tion­al con­science is af­fect­ed, (bear­ing in mind that they al­ready seem des­tined to ac­cept any­thing as told by the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion as sol­id truth), and may per­haps be in­tim­i­dat­ed by what can hap­pen dur­ing a SoE. While there has been a dire need on all fronts to mean­ing­ful­ly wrest the ini­tia­tives from the ten­ta­cles of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime (TOC) by or­gans of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the PP Gov­ern­ment has been un­able to jus­ti­fy, de­fine, and clar­i­fy what con­sti­tutes an SoE in terms of its le­gal­i­ty, ne­ces­si­ty and pro­por­tion­al­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al law, and our con­sti­tu­tion­al pre­rog­a­tives.

Can any­one imag­ine such a grave threat and yet the Unit­ed Na­tions was not in­formed un­til ei­ther Sep­tem­ber 5 or 6, 2011, by our UN Am­bas­sador Rod­ney Charles, and on­ly af­ter this mat­ter was brought to the at­ten­tion by this col­umn and the for­mer For­eign Af­fairs min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon in Par­lia­ment when de­bat­ing the need for ex­ten­sion of the SoE. The ev­i­dence gath­ered thus far is avail­able for all to see what ought to have been achieved by nor­mal po­lice work, con­sti­tu­tive of sound, in­te­grat­ed in­tel­li­gence, high­ly mo­ti­vat­ed po­lice lead­er­ship with a pos­i­tive ap­proach to de­tect­ing, de­ter­ring and rup­tur­ing the so­phis­ti­cat­ed and ex­tra­ne­ous ten­ta­cles of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime. In ad­di­tion, the de­ci­sion to de­clare a SoE may re­flect a gross in­dict­ment on the per­for­mance of Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs, giv­en the le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tions of the pub­lic and gov­ern­ment for re­duc­tion in crime.

Cer­tain­ly, the Com­mis­sion­er may have been caught un­pre­pared for the SoE, and would have im­pact­ed on his ini­tia­tives to trans­form the Po­lice Ser­vice. What we have ac­tu­al­ly done at the be­hest of the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is to grant po­lice pow­ers to the mil­i­tary, not nor­mal­ly trained in due process of the law, hu­man rights, and the rel­e­vant con­sti­tu­tion­al un­der­pin­nings. There is al­so ev­i­dence of hu­man rights abus­es at the hands of mil­i­tary. It is not a joke to em­pow­er sol­diers with­out ad­e­quate train­ing in these fields. Then, there is al­so the blur­ring of bound­aries in these sit­u­a­tions. Who can tell what can oc­cur in the fu­ture?

Next Week: As­sess­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness of Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs' ini­tia­tives in deal­ing with TOC.