Si­mon Lee

Even here where we sip hypocrisy like a slow cock­tail and dotish­ness seems to be a ma­jor req­ui­site for of­fice hold­ers, where bru­tal­i­ty to chil­dren, women and hard­back men is par for the course, the im­broglio over the mur­der of Japan­ese pan play­er Asa­mi Na­gakiya re­veals an ap­palling in­sti­tu­tion­alised ig­no­rance and in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty, even the bad­dest and mad­dest should hang their heads in shame for. It's true that Tim Kee has walked but one gets the im­pres­sion that he did so at sword tip, along a pi­rate's plank.

Ini­tial­ly, dam­age con­trol from the top down was the usu­al, too lit­tle too late. This one can't com­ment be­cause he's not ful­ly ap­prised of ei­ther the con­tent or con­text of the for­mer may­or's orig­i­nal state­ment –quite a stag­ger­ing ad­mis­sion of in­com­pe­tence (which might be read by some as in­dif­fer­ence) from some­one whose job ti­tle is Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

As the on­ly Gov­ern­ment spokesman deal­ing with the press and then as min­is­ter pre­sum­ably with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for keep­ing abreast of na­tion­al events, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­ders with po­ten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing in­ter­na­tion­al reper­cus­sions, Min­is­ter Cuffie was caught wrong-foot­ed in the at­tempt to defuse the gath­er­ing storm un­leashed by a pub­lic of­fi­cial, who un­aware he'd just swal­lowed one foot, prompt­ly shot him­self in the oth­er.

The Prime Min­is­ter's at­tempts at backpedalling on his orig­i­nal po­si­tion that there were no grounds for dis­miss­ing Sport-of-Pain's out­ra­geous­ly in­ept may­or demon­strat­ed a woe­ful lack of be­ing in touch with where the coun­try is at, com­pound­ed by bu­reau­crat­ic neg­li­gence at best, in­com­pe­tence at worst.

What suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, seem blind and deaf to, is that on a very ba­sic lev­el, things are not work­ing: from Im­mi­gra­tion to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, to the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and on and on. It is in­ex­cus­able that cru­cial in­for­ma­tion is not sup­plied in a time­ly fash­ion to those whose elect­ed du­ty is to serve and pro­tect the in­ter­ests of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, both at home and abroad.

If we leave the ob­vi­ous lack of re­al po­lit­i­cal will to shake up our mori­bund sys­tem and get it func­tion­ing aside for the mo­ment, we could fo­cus on some of the is­sues this tragedy forces us to re­flect on. Sad­ly, I can see that Asa­mi's mur­der will go the way of so many un­solved crimes and if we're our usu­al ten-day won­der selves, it will join the stack gath­er­ing dust, as we gape at the lat­est out­rage.

Which of course log­i­cal­ly brings us back to our dys­func­tion­al state–pris­on­ers on re­mand in­def­i­nite­ly for years, while lawyers gob­ble down ex­or­bi­tant fees; cas­es stalled for so long both de­fen­dants and wit­ness­es die, po­lice who lose ev­i­dence or in some cas­es ab­scond with it. But these are oth­er sto­ries.

The Asa­mi case bleak­ly high­lights the ig­no­rance and bru­tal­i­ty which no longer sim­mer be­low the sur­face but erupt dai­ly in what is sup­pos­ed­ly one of the hap­pi­est coun­tries in the world; well you know what they say –ig­no­rance is bliss.

The fact that Asa­mi was mur­dered at the cli­max of our na­tion­al fes­ti­val, when "All ah we is one" (al­though bot­tle pelt­ing, cut­lass chop­ping and shot still call­ing), seems to have es­caped com­ment. But let's fo­cus on Asa­mi's mur­der and the way it is now be­ing "in­ves­ti­gat­ed" (fever­ish­ly and as­sid­u­ous­ly, leav­ing no stone un­turned–I be­lieve are the usu­al hol­low clich�s).

Can we look for the same alacrity and thor­ough­ness brought to bear on Dana See­ta­hal's as­sas­si­na­tion? Prob­a­bly.

For an in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence and po­ten­tial vis­i­tors, Asa­mi's mur­der means that Trinidad is a dan­ger­ous, pos­si­bly life-threat­en­ing des­ti­na­tion and that Car­ni­val can be fa­tal. Res­ig­na­tion or no res­ig­na­tion Tim Kee's com­ments will fur­ther alien­ate po­ten­tial LGBT vis­i­tors. Of course, this is just what we need at this time of belt tight­en­ing, when the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion we've been chat­ting about since 1986 is still emp­ty chat and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of de­vel­op­ing tourism has now tak­en yet an­oth­er nose dive.

De­spite his over­due res­ig­na­tion the for­mer may­or's un­con­sid­ered knee-jerk re­sponse has al­ready added in­sult to in­jury. At best it could have been read as a blun­der­ing at­tempt to shift blame from mur­der­er to vic­tim or at worst, as a misog­y­nis­tic, sex­ist, self-right­eous, bru­tal­ly cal­lous and to­tal­ly un­aware state­ment, aimed at evad­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

But then the may­or, whose sub­se­quent re­trac­tion was as dis­hon­ourable as his orig­i­nal state­ment, was mere­ly voic­ing what pass­es in the minds of many here and which has be­come as ac­cept­able as the rape of ba­bies, abuse of chil­dren, women, the el­der­ly, home­less, dis­abled and poor.

Asa­mi wasn't mur­dered be­cause she was win­ing in a biki­ni, as though she was dis­re­spect­ing the hypocrisy which pass­es for moral­i­ty in a coun­try whose cul­ture she loved and sup­port­ed. How­ev­er, she was mur­dered be­cause T&T has be­come a killing field, where abuse at many lev­els is the norm, com­pound­ed by gross ig­no­rance and neg­li­gence.

In­stead of dis­tanc­ing our­selves from the mur­der by what­ev­er dis­hon­ourable means, we all stand guilty and com­plic­it.