This week we saw a good example of picture being worth "a thousand words." The picture in reference spoke volumes, insofar as it relates to at least one of the many challenges we face in this tiny nation: crime. This nation witnessed Watson Duke being led to court, charged with a couple serious offences, with both hands swinging, like Tyson entering the ring. Again I shook my head, ashamed to claim citizenship in this land where justice no longer even pretends to be blind.
Let it be clearly understood at the outset that I hold no brief for or against Mr Duke. While conspiracy theories in this particular case abound, this is not about his innocence or guilt.
The Ag Commissioner Police of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) was heard late last week at a sporting event pleading and begging citizens to come forward and provide the police with assistance and information to help make T&T a better, safer place; a respectable and noble plea indeed.
But Mr CoP, how do you expect this nation to respond watching a man charged with serious offences being led to court like a boxer, while the same nation watched on in disgust as a disabled woman was dragged down a major city street in handcuffs for some weed? Or when we see police officers who have been charged, protected from the media, often with heads covered and shuttled through back doors?
Mr Duke was asked to "present himself to the police for investigation" and we were made to believe that the investigation lasted for the entire weekend; this despite the time frame for an individual to be released or be charged. It is widely speculated that Mr Duke was taken out the back entrance on Friday evening, while the media covered the front, spending the entire weekend elsewhere. Evidence of this is could have been seen in his attire on the way to court which was totally different from that which he entered the police station with on Friday.
While the part about the "gentleman" spending the entire weekend elsewhere is based on speculation, it addresses the heart of the issue between Mr and Mrs John Public and the TTPS, in which the public has zero confidence. It is clear that to all that there are two different sets of laws operating in this land–one for the well-to-do, the Watson Dukes et al, or as I refer to them, the pseudo-bourgeoisie and another for the "nobodies," the people whose doors are kicked down; the people who are pulled out of maxis and made to lie on the nation's wet roadways while the police search for a joint.
Sadly, this dual system exists not only in our dysfunctional criminal justice system, where individuals are housed for on average of 10-13 years before being brought to trial for serious offences, but in just about every other institution in this land. Space does not allow for a complete analysis. However, that the president of this land has to make a call for "quality healthcare" indicates what we have known all along: that there are two parallel health care systems running in this tiny nation; one for the pseudo-bourgeoisies and the other for the nobodies, who spend nights sleeping on hospital floors, without medication. Irony would have it that it is often the same staff that is employed at both the private and public institutions.
And of course there is our infamous education system, where the two tier system is germinated, with some archaic agreement signed before independence, as in the Concordat. Yet there are those among us who wonder why we have the numerous challenges we do in such a tiny, used-to-be-oil-rich-nation.
Citizens of this nation will continue to ignore any and all pleas from the TTPS as long as they continue to observe the clear double standards. Meanwhile, this will only serve to create more criminal activities, as individuals take the law into their own hands, while the TTPS will throw their hands up in praise of job security, allowing the bodies to pile up. And lawyers will continue to request postponements ensuring that they too, can eat a food, and drive luxury vehicles, validating the concept of the pseudo-bourgeoisies.
Rudy Chato Paul, Sr
Dabadie