Ira Math­ur

www.iras­room.org

"No le­gal ten­ants were evict­ed on Sat­ur­day...on­ly squat­ters and peo­ple with some kind of pump­kin-vine re­la­tion­ship. What is the noise about? Every­thing in Trinidad has to be a bac­cha­nal. What would peo­ple pre­fer, for peo­ple to live in squalor for­ev­er? Is that their aim?"

Chair­man of HDC Noel Gar­cia's com­ments last week af­ter squat­ters were re­port­ed­ly legal­ly evict­ed by the HDC from apart­ments in East Port-of-Spain.

Now, peo­ple may for­get and for­give what you say or do, but nev­er for­get how you made them feel.

So Sat­ur­day be­fore last, HDC of­fi­cials, ac­com­pa­nied by po­lice, faces cov­ered like ban­dits, went in­to gov­ern­ment-owned sub­sidised apart­ments on In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, and law­ful­ly 'evict­ed' il­le­gal oc­cu­pants. Peo­ple will re­mem­ber how they felt see­ing their pos­ses­sions thrown on the street, their doors and win­dows re­moved–vi­o­lat­ed, de­meaned and de­hu­man­ised.

It may well be cor­rect that, as Chair­man Gar­cia said, the evic­tion came af­ter an ex­tend­ed no­tice, af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with the in­hab­i­tants (I don't see how that worked out giv­en the pow­er dy­nam­ic be­tween squat­ters and the State), that the de­mo­li­tions were part of a plan to 're­vi­talise' Port-of-Spain; that res­i­dents did not have a ti­tle or an agree­ment to re­main in oc­cu­pa­tion in the hous­ing units, that HDC was not legal­ly re­quired to re­lo­cate the res­i­dents.

But Mr Gar­cia for­gets that the State has a so­cial con­tract with cit­i­zens and is a ser­vant of cit­i­zens with a du­ty of care to en­sure cit­i­zens' fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights, which in­clude hous­ing and safe­ty. This so­cial con­tract re­quires that cit­i­zens abide by the law and, in re­turn, are pro­tect­ed by the State.

Peo­ple have a right to com­plain when state largesse is done care­less­ly (res­i­dents were of­fered apart­ments in south Trinidad) means dis­place­ment from their com­mu­ni­ty, prox­im­i­ty to jobs, and chil­dren's schools.

It was un­for­tu­nate but in­evitable that the in­ci­dent turned in­to a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball. The Op­po­si­tion seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain po­lit­i­cal mileage by be­rat­ing the rul­ing par­ty with­out pro­vid­ing an al­ter­nate long-term plan.

Yet, the per­son­al is un­de­ni­ably po­lit­i­cal. So when a res­i­dent of East Port-of-Spain, a die-hard PN­Mite who will prob­a­bly still vote PNM till her last breath, told me, through tears, that the PNM will lose elec­tions, or at best, win nar­row­ly next time over this in­ci­dent, that this is the fi­nal straw that could break the camel's back those in pow­er would be wise to sit up and lis­ten.

She says the rul­ing par­ty has for­got­ten how tough liv­ing in the East-West Cor­ri­dor is. It's not 'nor­mal' to live where your child can be gunned down for step­ping over the line to lime or play foot­ball on an­oth­er street, in her case, Dun­can or Nel­son street. She says peo­ple in East Port-of-Spain are un­pro­tect­ed from be­ing gunned down from ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment, from un­em­ploy­ment, from home­less­ness. The MP for East Port-of-Spain, Kei­th Scot­land and the coun­cil­lor whose name she doesn't even re­mem­ber are in­vis­i­ble in the area. It's hard enough that CEPEP and URP jobs are hard to get. They are run by ca­bals–you need a light bill and a NIS num­ber. If you've nev­er worked, how do you get that? Why do you think, she says, there are more gang killings? Why are boys spring­ing up like mush­rooms sell­ing wa­ter, sin­gles from a pack of cig­a­rettes to make some­thing to eat some­thing, and rapid­ly be­ing fa­thered by gangs? Women, moth­ers, and grand­moth­ers are get­ting more ag­gres­sive, daugh­ters fight­ing in school, all bat­tling for pam­pers, food, books, trans­port, and med­i­cine.

All peo­ple mat­ter. This is what the bac­cha­nal is about. Not un­der­stand­ing that all hu­mans have a right to a roof over their heads, to be treat­ed with re­spect when be­ing asked to leave a bor­rowed roof or be­ing re­lo­cat­ed could be the last straw and (self-in­ter­est­ed politi­cians take note) could lose you your next elec­tion.

Civilised so­ci­eties are judged by how we treat our most vul­ner­a­ble.

Squalor is nev­er an 'aim', Mr Gar­cia–it's a state of help­less­ness. The hu­man im­pulse is to live in dig­ni­ty. The law­less­ness of squat­ters is a di­rect re­sult of the fail­ure of the State to keep its side of the bar­gain. In this case, the State was not civilised.

Ira Math­ur is the longest-run­ning colum­nist for Guardian Me­dia and the au­thor of the mem­oir Love The Dark Days.