Pe­ter Bal­roop

Sus­tained, loud ap­plause from the au­di­ence broke out yes­ter­day when pan­el­list Michael Har­ris said the last ves­tiges of colo­nial­ism cling­ing to T&T, the par­ty pol­i­tics es­poused by PNM's leader, Patrick Man­ning and UNC leader, Bas­deo Pan­day, must be dis­man­tled for the coun­try to go for­ward and es­cape the clutch­es of racial ten­sions. Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) leader Makan­dal Daa­ga, an­oth­er pan­el­list, in the first ses­sion of the Val­sayn Teach­ers Col­lege sem­i­nar put on by the Foun­da­tion for Pol­i­tics and Lead­er­ship with the fo­cus on Gov­er­nance in the 21st cen­tu­ry, al­so stirred deep emo­tions in the au­di­ence. That came when Daa­ga com­plained lit­tle was known about the tu­mul­tuous 1970 Black Pow­er march to cen­tral Trinidad and back in­to Port-of-Spain, which was one of the few oc­ca­sions in T&T's his­to­ry when na­tion­als of African and East In­di­an her­itage pre­sent­ed a unit­ed front against the Gov­ern­ment of the day, head­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Er­ic Williams.

Oth­er pan­el­lists in­clud­ed UWI, St Au­gus­tine pro vice chan­cel­lor for plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment, Dr Bhoe Tewarie and se­nior re­search fel­low at Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, Prof Brins­ley Sama­roo. Prompt­ed by mod­er­a­tor, Andy John­son, to com­ment on the im­pact of race on pol­i­tics in T&T, Sama­roo said cit­i­zens had yet to es­cape the "box" they had been placed in by the colo­nial mas­ters who were ex­pert at "di­vide and rule" tac­tics. That was clear­ly seen by the fact that Africans and In­di­ans still found it dif­fi­cult to work to­geth­er in T&T 48 years af­ter In­de­pen­dence. Sama­roo lat­er ar­gued that the three sig­nif­i­cant dates in T&T when the two races had unit­ed were, 1937 when the trade union move­ment was born and con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form be­gan; 1970 for the Black Pow­er rev­o­lu­tion and 1986 when the rul­ing PNM Gov­ern­ment was swept aside 33-3 by the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR).

Har­ris made the point about see­ing the backs of Man­ning and Pan­day af­ter stress­ing that the PNM Gov­ern­ment was in­tent on get­ting rid of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem that had op­er­at­ed here for over a cen­tu­ry. The irony was on­ly by broad­en­ing the lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem would the qual­i­ty of life of the man in the street im­prove, said Har­ris. "So every­one in this coun­try knows what the so­lu­tion is," he de­clared. Daa­ga said dur­ing the his­toric 1970 march, cen­tral Trinidad In­di­ans wel­comed their African brethren in­to their homes with open arms. It was a move that fright­ened Williams, who de­clared a state of emer­gency and on the way back to Port-of-Spain African and In­di­an marchers were beat­en four times by sol­diers and coast guards­men.

Daa­ga said the me­dia was guilty of not high­light­ing this oc­ca­sion where Africans and In­di­ans in T&T unit­ed against a re­pres­sive Gov­ern­ment. There were sev­en ses­sions in the all-day sem­i­nar, and among pan­el­lists were Win­ston Dook­er­an, Regi­nald Du­mas, Ravi-Ji, An­cil Ro­get, Prakash Ra­mad­har, Ash­worth Jack, Mer­le Hodge, Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith, Desmond Al­lum and Hazel Brown.