Mick­ela Pan­day

There is a feel­ing that many peo­ple across Trinidad and To­ba­go have been strug­gling to put in­to words. A heav­i­ness. An un­ease. A grow­ing sense of un­cer­tain­ty.

Crime con­tin­ues to weigh heav­i­ly on fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. Eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty con­tin­ues to place pres­sure on house­holds al­ready try­ing to make ends meet. Yet along­side these very re­al con­cerns, many cit­i­zens are ex­press­ing some­thing else. A grow­ing dis­com­fort with the na­tion­al cli­mate and the di­rec­tion in which our pub­lic dis­course ap­pears to be head­ing.

Peo­ple speak about be­com­ing more cau­tious. More guard­ed. More care­ful about what they say, who they say it to and whether ex­press­ing cer­tain opin­ions is worth the trou­ble.

Some wor­ry about be­ing tar­get­ed. Oth­ers fear be­ing la­belled, ridiculed or vic­timised for hold­ing a par­tic­u­lar view. Many sim­ply feel that the at­mos­phere has changed.

These con­cerns should not be dis­missed.

Whether one agrees with them or not, they are be­ing ex­pressed by or­di­nary cit­i­zens from dif­fer­ent back­grounds, pro­fes­sions and po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sions. They re­flect some­thing deep­er than a dis­agree­ment over pol­i­cy. They re­flect a grow­ing con­cern about con­fi­dence. Con­fi­dence in our in­sti­tu­tions, con­fi­dence in our pub­lic dis­course and con­fi­dence that cit­i­zens can par­tic­i­pate freely in na­tion­al life.

This is why the re­cent de­bate sur­round­ing the State of Emer­gency has res­onat­ed far be­yond ques­tions of crime fight­ing and con­sti­tu­tion­al law.

Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ar­gued that con­sti­tu­tion­al rights are not ab­solute and that gov­ern­ments have the au­thor­i­ty to reg­u­late cer­tain free­doms in the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. The Con­sti­tu­tion it­self pro­vides for ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures dur­ing ex­tra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances. That le­gal ar­gu­ment is not re­al­ly the is­sue.

The is­sue is whether the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion ends there. Be­cause while lawyers and politi­cians de­bate what re­stric­tions may or may not be per­mis­si­ble, many cit­i­zens are ask­ing a dif­fer­ent ques­tion: What kind of at­mos­phere are we cre­at­ing in our coun­try?

A democ­ra­cy is not de­fined sole­ly by the rights that ex­ist on pa­per. It is al­so shaped by whether cit­i­zens feel con­fi­dent enough to ex­er­cise those rights.

There is a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence be­tween be­ing legal­ly en­ti­tled to speak and feel­ing com­fort­able enough to do so.

Peo­ple do not with­draw from pub­lic life on­ly when they are pro­hib­it­ed from par­tic­i­pat­ing. They al­so with­draw when they be­gin to feel that par­tic­i­pa­tion comes at a per­son­al cost. When speak­ing up brings ridicule. When ques­tion­ing is met with hos­til­i­ty. When ex­press­ing a view in­vites at­tack rather than dis­cus­sion. Over time, that has con­se­quences.

Peo­ple be­come more re­luc­tant to en­gage. And even­tu­al­ly, many sim­ply de­cide that stay­ing out of the con­ver­sa­tion is eas­i­er than be­com­ing part of it. This is why the re­cent in­ter­ven­tion by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go is so im­por­tant.

The As­so­ci­a­tion did not dis­miss the se­ri­ous se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try, nor did it ar­gue that the State lacks the au­thor­i­ty to re­spond to gen­uine threats. In­stead, it re­mind­ed us that there must al­ways be care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of the bal­ance be­tween pub­lic safe­ty and con­sti­tu­tion­al free­doms.

More im­por­tant­ly, it helped shift the con­ver­sa­tion be­yond a nar­row le­gal de­bate and to­ward a broad­er dis­cus­sion about pub­lic con­fi­dence, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion and the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing trust in our in­sti­tu­tions.

Those are dis­cus­sions worth hav­ing. In fact, more in­sti­tu­tions should be pre­pared to con­tribute to them. Strong in­sti­tu­tions are not ob­sta­cles to democ­ra­cy. They are among its great­est safe­guards.

A con­fi­dent gov­ern­ment should not fear those voic­es; it should wel­come them. Yet many cit­i­zens would be for­giv­en for con­clud­ing that crit­i­cism is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly un­wel­come in our pub­lic life.

The con­cern is not sim­ply about laws or reg­u­la­tions. It is al­so about tone.

Too of­ten, those who raise le­git­i­mate ques­tions are met not with an­swers but with ridicule. Not with en­gage­ment but with per­son­al at­tacks. Not with de­bate but with at­tempts to dis­cred­it, em­bar­rass or dis­miss.

We see it on so­cial me­dia. We hear it in po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary. And, we see it re­flect­ed in the con­duct of those en­trust­ed with rep­re­sent­ing the pub­lic.

Re­cent ex­changes on both sides in Par­lia­ment have done lit­tle to re­as­sure those who al­ready feel un­easy about the state of our pub­lic dis­course. When pub­lic of­fi­cials ap­pear more in­ter­est­ed in mock­ing crit­ics than ad­dress­ing con­cerns, peo­ple no­tice. When po­lit­i­cal fig­ures use their plat­forms to ridicule those who dis­agree with them, peo­ple no­tice.

And when that be­hav­iour be­comes nor­malised, it in­evitably con­tributes to a cli­mate in which more cit­i­zens be­gin to ques­tion whether speak­ing up is worth the trou­ble. This is why the con­ver­sa­tion be­fore us can­not sim­ply be about what is le­gal. It must al­so be about what is healthy.

Are we cre­at­ing a so­ci­ety where cit­i­zens feel en­cour­aged to par­tic­i­pate, ques­tion and con­tribute? Or are we cre­at­ing one where more and more peo­ple feel com­pelled to re­main silent? That ques­tion should con­cern all of us, re­gard­less of our po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance.

We do not have to agree on every­thing. That is not the point. The point is that cit­i­zens should nev­er be­come afraid to ask ques­tions. They should nev­er be­come afraid to ex­press their views. And they should nev­er feel com­pelled to choose be­tween speak­ing their mind and pro­tect­ing them­selves.

A healthy democ­ra­cy re­quires more than rights. It re­quires the con­fi­dence to use them.

Mick­ela Pan­day is the Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front and At­tor­ney at Law