Tony Fras­er

One of the sad­dest re­ac­tions to what is clear­ly a gen­uine at­tempt by an in­di­vid­ual to in­flu­ence change in a po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of dom­i­na­tion by Gov­ern­ment is the vul­gar­i­ty of el­e­ments of the po­lit­i­cal re­sponse. "He play­ing the fool." "He's be­hav­ing like a spoilt child...he has to grow up."

Then there was the sug­ges­tion that hunger-strik­er Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh goes home at night and gorges him­self on food and drink. That was fol­lowed by a cheap as­sem­blage of a rent-a-crowd in sup­port of pro­ceed­ing with the por­tion of the high­way in ques­tion, the or­gan­is­ers even pro­duc­ing a counter hunger-strik­er.

There were al­so the state­ments from on high which sought to dis­tort and mis­lead about the his­to­ry of the events sur­round­ing the hunger strike and the re­quest/de­mand for a trans­par­ent and tech­ni­cal re­view of the project. One of the hi­lar­i­ous re­ac­tions clear­ly aimed at dis­cred­it­ing Dr Kublals­ingh is talk by the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al about the al­leged il­le­gal­i­ty of the hunger strike.

So are the au­thor­i­ties to ar­rest and charge him for at­tempt­ing to com­mit sui­cide? Are they call­ing on the po­lice to throw him in a cell and force-feed him? More se­ri­ous­ly, I de­scribe the re­ac­tions as vul­gar be­cause they seek to re­duce po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty that protests poli­cies and pro­grammes of the Gov­ern­ment in a self-sac­ri­fi­cial man­ner to the pop­u­lar eat-ah-food po­lit­i­cal cul­ture that is all-ab­sorb­ing and threat­en­ing to drain the so­ci­ety of its hu­man­i­ty and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­tegri­ty.

The re­ac­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the UNC el­e­ment of the Cab­i­net have as its ob­jec­tive, the deep­en­ing of the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of ig­no­rance and the fur­ther en­trench­ing of trib­al loy­al­ty and mes­sian­ic, un­ques­tion­ing lead­er­ship which have de­vel­oped here dur­ing the 50 years of po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence.

I, like tens of thou­sands of oth­er cit­i­zens, am wait­ing to be per­suad­ed one way or the oth­er by a tech­ni­cal re­port done by a team of in­de­pen­dent pro­fes­sion­als. In­clud­ed in the dis­tor­tion is the at­tempt to make as if the pro­test­ers are against the con­struc­tion of the high­way in its en­tire­ty. It was par­tic­u­lar­ly sad that the prin­ci­pal of the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of UWI, Prof Clement Sankat, if he was fair­ly quot­ed in a news­pa­per re­port, sup­port­ed that no­tion.

If Prof Sankat was com­pre­hen­sive­ly re­port­ed it would be fright­en­ing that the prin­ci­pal of a uni­ver­si­ty, a place of thought and crit­i­cal think­ing, was not able to make a dis­tinc­tion be­tween the call for a re-rout­ing of a por­tion of the high­way and the sug­ges­tion that the protest is against the en­tire high­way.

In­stead of en­gag­ing in a lot of emo­tion­al rhetoric, what the PM?should have done when she met with jour­nal­ists was to read from the tech­ni­cal re­port she says has been done. The state­ment should have been pre­ced­ed by: who con­duct­ed the sur­vey; what were the fac­tors tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion by the re­searchers and the man­date giv­en. At the same time, the PM's as­sis­tants should have pre­pared full copies of the re­port for the me­dia.

Such an ap­proach would have been in­valu­able to those who pre­fer to be per­suad­ed by sci­en­tif­ic facts, hu­man and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact sur­veys. In­stead of seed­ing such a po­lit­i­cal cul­ture to ad­vance the pol­i­tics, the PM is set to en­gage in a se­ries of pub­lic par­ty meet­ings to whip up emo­tion­al and even trib­al loy­al­ties and re­ac­tions.

How is this ap­proach dif­fer­ent from when Man­ning re­fused to have the coun­try ex­posed to ra­tio­nale and sci­en­tif­ic ar­gu­ments about the con­struc­tion of smelter plants? There must have been an ex­pec­ta­tion that po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship would have evolved in the three-to four-year pe­ri­od since.

The coun­try is in no bet­ter po­si­tion to de­ter­mine whether one form of de­vel­op­ment has more ben­e­fits to the so­ci­ety over an­oth­er and this is be­cause of the pol­i­tics of dom­i­na­tion prac­tised by all sides. Dr Kublals­ingh has made his point with courage and in­tegri­ty.