Clevon Raphael

Ob­vi­ous­ly, my sin­cere and earnest ap­peal for cool heads to pre­vail in the on­go­ing Sec­tion 34 e-mail im­broglio has been lost on cer­tain seg­ments of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.An ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent in­volv­ing the lead in­ves­ti­ga­tor in­to the af­fair, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mervyn Richard­son, has al­so un­der­lined some­thing I have been re­peat­ed­ly ar­gu­ing for a long time; that we are very undis­ci­plined and in too many in­stances we have lost re­spect for au­thor­i­ty and au­thor­i­ta­tive fig­ures.

And if we con­tin­ue on this path we shall cer­tain­ly rue the day when we shall reap the whirl­wind of this self-de­struc­tive men­tal­i­ty.Per­haps you have guessed where I am com­ing from. Yes, it is the un­war­rant­ed and to­tal­ly un­be­com­ing ver­bal abuse of Mr Richard­son at a su­per­mar­ket in east Trinidad last week Fri­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the News­day lead sto­ry: "Richard­son, who was in the com­pa­ny of his wife, was plac­ing gro­cery items in his trol­ley when some shop­pers recog­nised him and be­gan shout­ing and hurl­ing abuse at him, ac­cus­ing him of pick­ing on Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and tak­ing sides in the probe."Some of those mo­rons went so far as to use ob­scene lan­guage, a crim­i­nal of­fence on our stat­ue books, and be­cause of the con­duct of the mis­cre­ants the cou­ple were forced to do their shop­ping else­where.

Now I have nev­er met the gen­tle­man and from re­ports I have re­ceived about him he is sup­posed to be a very af­fa­ble, con­ge­nial and ded­i­cat­ed law-en­force­ment of­fi­cer.Pray tell me what Mr Richard­son could have done that day to earn the type of un­ruly be­hav­iour of peo­ple who no doubt would have rushed for his as­sis­tance if they were un­der at­tack by the crim­i­nal el­e­ments at that pre­cise time and lo­ca­tion.

The fact is that they were crass and lack­ing in good eti­quette to do what they did and in the pres­ence of his wife, who has ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with the TTPS ex­cept that she is the spouse of the act­ing CoP.I won­dered if there were any young peo­ple present who might have wit­nessed this ut­ter ghet­to dis­play by adults who should be en­cour­ag­ing the young ones to re­spect au­thor­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly at this time when there seems to be, as I said ear­li­er, wan­ton dis­re­spect and in­dis­ci­pline in all stra­ta of the so­ci­ety.

On be­half of all right think­ing and pa­tri­ot­ic cit­i­zens of T&T who, thank God, are in the vast ma­jor­i­ty, I would like to apol­o­gise to Mr Richard­son and es­pe­cial­ly his wife who, ac­cord­ing to the re­port, un­der­stand­ably had to be com­fort­ed af­ter be­ing put through that trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence.

A very dis­heart­en­ing fea­ture about this in­ci­dent was the to­tal si­lence from lead­ing politi­cians, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the op­po­si­tion side, who said not a sin­gle word in con­dem­na­tion of this mob-like out­burst in a coun­try that is well known for its de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples through the years ex­cept for the aber­ra­tions in 1970 and 1990.

I am not in the least blam­ing any politi­cian for that dis­taste­ful oc­cur­rence but if I were Dr Row­ley, be­cause my name was men­tioned I would have tak­en im­me­di­ate steps to con­demn the in­ci­dent, which could have got out of hand if Mr Richard­son had de­cid­ed to stand his ground and con­tin­ue his and his wife's le­git­i­mate busi­ness.

The on­ly lead­ing politi­cian to come out against this rep­re­hen­si­ble sce­nario is At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, and not­ing the state­ments be­ing made by a cer­tain politi­cian op­posed to the PP in this e-mail con­fu­sion the AG said: "His reck­less and ir­re­spon­si­ble state­ments against the com­mis­sion­er and Mr Richard­son bor­der on in­cite­ment to com­mit a breach of the peace and what we are wit­ness­ing is the har­vest and fruit of the seeds of dis­or­der and dis­con­tent that he seems bent on sow­ing."

I am not try­ing to be alarmist and some may say it was just plain old Tri­ni pi­cong and what have you, but we would be mak­ing a big mis­take if we adopt that non­cha­lant at­ti­tude, be­cause in this some­what charged sit­u­a­tion the spo­ken word can un­wit­ting­ly lead to very un­for­tu­nate reper­cus­sions among the hot-heads who ex­ist in prac­ti­cal­ly all po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions in our fair land.

We must al­so com­pli­ment the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, which was among the very few groups, per­haps the on­ly na­tion­al group, to raise its voice in protest against this un­seem­ly de­vel­op­ment.What do they say about a word to the wise...