Hamid Ghany

The re­cent com­ments on Ra­dio Jaagri­ti by Mr Sat­narayan Ma­haraj to the ef­fect that the late prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning was a racist drew the ire of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. The Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, asked ques­tions about whether the events re­count­ed by Ma­haraj were true or not, while not agree­ing on the race ques­tion.

While re­ject­ing the view that Man­ning was a racist, I recog­nise that the chal­lenge that has been pre­sent­ed here is the ques­tion of the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of po­lit­i­cal and pol­i­cy events. That chal­lenge starts with the is­sue of recog­nis­ing that in so­ci­eties like ours po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age and po­lit­i­cal ac­tions are of­ten cast in racial terms as a means of de­scrib­ing mo­tive.

This has be­dev­illed our so­ci­ety both be­fore and af­ter in­de­pen­dence. The talk of a racial di­vide is of­ten con­fused with what is re­al­ly a po­lit­i­cal di­vide. This has been ex­ac­er­bat­ed over the last 30 years with the fact that the coun­try's old­est par­ty, the PNM, has had to ro­tate pow­er with oth­er par­ties since 1986.

The emer­gence of a re­al two-par­ty sys­tem since 1991 with the emer­gence of the UNC as an op­po­si­tion and then as a gov­ern­ment has changed the po­lit­i­cal dy­nam­ic of the coun­try in such a way as to blur the lines be­tween race and pol­i­tics. Be­fore the NAR de­feat­ed the PNM in 1986, there was nev­er any se­ri­ous chal­lenge faced by the PNM for its first 30 years of ex­is­tence (1956-86).

How­ev­er, its last 30 years (1986-2016) has seen fre­quent ro­ta­tions of pow­er in 1986, 1991, 1995, 2001, 2010 and 2015. It is this phe­nom­e­non that has cre­at­ed a high­er de­gree of po­lit­i­cal angst than be­fore about po­lit­i­cal con­tests. Pri­or to 1986 there was nev­er any doubt about who would win elec­tions as it was a fore­gone con­clu­sion that the PNM alone was dom­i­nant.

How­ev­er, the seeds of po­lit­i­cal change were al­ways ly­ing be­low the sur­face and the elec­torate was not as racial­ly po­larised as some would have us be­lieve. The 1981, 1991, 1995, 2001 and 2007 elec­tions bore tes­ti­mo­ny to that fact based on the out­comes with third par­ties hav­ing an im­pact on the re­sults.

The ex­is­tence of strong third par­ties in so­ci­eties where there are sup­pos­ed­ly strong bi­fur­ca­tions of vot­ing be­hav­iour tend to un­der­mine the race ar­gu­ment. Their lim­it­ed suc­cess is usu­al­ly a func­tion of the sys­tem of elec­tion.

It is of­ten said that race is the en­gine of pol­i­tics in plur­al so­ci­eties. The cre­ation of anx­i­ety and fear are fac­tors that usu­al­ly dri­ve po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns at the ground lev­el while main­tain­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism above the sur­face on all sides. The in­ter­play be­tween race, re­li­gion and eth­nic­i­ty can make a lethal cock­tail for any so­ci­ety to en­dure dur­ing peak pe­ri­ods of po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty.

De­spite all of this, T&T has done quite well com­par­a­tive­ly speak­ing with oth­er de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. There is al­ways the pres­ence of some­thing called "the race card" which can be used as a tool of guilt or mo­bil­i­sa­tion. The deep­er is­sue is the ques­tion of so­cial­i­sa­tion and how peo­ple think.

The re­cent con­cerns ex­pressed by the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion about the un­der-per­for­mance of schools in the East-West cor­ri­dor in re­la­tion to schools in cen­tral and south Trinidad is one of those mark­ers of ad­vance­ment which is cru­cial to the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of the so­ci­ety.

Ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties are equal­ly avail­able to all and have been in­creas­ing­ly so in the post-in­de­pen­dence pe­ri­od, how­ev­er, it is the oth­er fac­tors of home life, school dis­ci­pline, com­mit­ment of teach­ers among oth­ers that can make the dif­fer­ence. The Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion must be com­pli­ment­ed for flag­ging the is­sue be­cause in 20 years from now that can make the dif­fer­ence be­tween young pro­fes­sion­als and young crim­i­nals as sad as that may seem.

Dr Row­ley's re­sponse to Ma­haraj raised the is­sue of sedi­tion large­ly be­cause of the ref­er­ence to race in the com­men­tary by Ma­haraj. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar cau­tioned him about the use of the term large­ly be­cause there were is­sues of in­ter­pre­ta­tion of con­tro­ver­sial events. The fact that those kinds of ex­changes can take place among po­lit­i­cal lead­ers in our so­ci­ety with­out the at­ten­dant vi­o­lence that such ex­changes would bring in oth­er de­vel­op­ing coun­tries is a sign of ma­tu­ri­ty.

There are some by-prod­ucts emerg­ing from these ex­changes as the Guardian re­port­ed last Tues­day that for­mer speak­er Oc­c­ah Sea­paul in­di­cat­ed that she planned to sue Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley about his com­ments on her tenure as Speak­er dur­ing a pe­ri­od of con­tro­ver­sy in Ju­ly-Au­gust 1995.

In gen­er­al, it is usu­al­ly dif­fi­cult to have a civ­il con­ver­sa­tion about is­sues of race in this so­ci­ety be­cause of a pref­er­ence for a psy­chol­o­gy of avoid­ance of the sub­ject it­self. In rais­ing the is­sue at the open­ing of Par­lia­ment last year, Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona said: "Why can we not all just get along?" (Hansard, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Sep­tem­ber 23, 2015, p 9).

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, life is not as sim­ple as that. Dis­agree­ment is as healthy as con­sen­sus in en­sur­ing that rights and free­doms are pro­tect­ed. For us, race is not a cri­sis, but rather a re­al­i­ty that we have learned to live with peace­ful­ly.