Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

The poli­ty that is Trinidad and To­ba­go is go­ing through (and not for the first time) the ex­pe­ri­ence of the one po­lit­i­cal half of the coun­try, In­do-Trinidad, tak­ing over from the oth­er po­lit­i­cal half, Afro-Trinidad. More pre­cise­ly, the po­lit­i­cal fac­tions should be di­vid­ed up in thirds, as that oth­er seg­ment con­sis­tent­ly stays away from the elec­toral polls and mass un­flinch­ing sup­port for the trib­al par­ties.

As with pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions, an at­tempt is in progress to es­tab­lish dom­i­nant cul­tur­al, eco­nom­ic, so­ci­o­log­i­cal, and re­li­gious con­trol to shift the cen­tre of grav­i­ty of the coun­try from the trib­al north to the trib­al south.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has tak­en the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice to Philip­pine; she even had her “man of busi­ness min­is­ter” con­demn the of­fi­cial quar­ters of the Prime Min­is­ter as be­ing “un­fit for oc­cu­pa­tion”, thus giv­ing cre­den­tial sup­port to the de­ci­sion to lo­cate at her home and of­fice in the south. The above and more were telegraphed ear­ly in com­ing to of­fice when the PM an­nounced to those who may not have been aware that there ex­ists a T&T and life be­yond the light­house at the out­ward lim­its of the City of Port-of-Spain.  

Ear­ly on, the PM es­tab­lished her work­ing con­cept, an ide­o­log­i­cal po­si­tion re­al­ly, of “fair­ness” as a fun­da­men­tal pil­lar of her gov­ern­ment to achieve. The state­ment be­ing that the pop­u­la­tion out­side of the city lim­its has not been con­sid­ered ful­ly as part of the whole and so has been de­prived of re­sources and recog­ni­tion.

In the process of achiev­ing such a goal, the PM had the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank fired os­ten­si­bly on the ba­sis of his re­fusal to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on which el­e­ments of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty were hav­ing first and ad­van­ta­geous pref­er­ence to the for­eign ex­change.

The un­der­ly­ing be­lief is that the big city cor­po­ra­tions have first and pref­er­en­tial ac­cess to the for­eign ex­change of the econ­o­my.

Easy ac­cess to uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion has been an­oth­er at­tempt to al­low for law stu­dents of the South and Deep South to re­main close to home at the UWI South Cam­pus. And she was not jok­ing about hav­ing the Pe­nal/Debe cam­pus be­come func­tion­al, as she threat­ened to take charge of the fac­ul­ty from the UWI prin­ci­pal and ad­min­is­tra­tion if it failed to do so. 

The strate­gic shift in the pow­er base held in pre­vi­ous terms by Afros in the state en­ter­pris­es sec­tor has been self-ev­i­dent. The state board di­rec­tors and sig­nif­i­cant po­si­tions in the state ap­pa­ra­tus, once the al­leged sole pos­ses­sion of the Afro-Tri­ni seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion, have been turned in­to an In­do-hege­mo­ny. One of the trade union lead­ers who com­bined with the UNC to win the elec­tion has called out what he con­sid­ers to be over­whelm­ing and un­fair ap­point­ments, which have left labour lead­ers out of pow­er.  

PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar even got se­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­point­ed about her min­is­ters who were, or in­tend­ing to en­gage in cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties in  the city at the Hy­att with her fa­mous “buss head” threat. She was high­ly in­dig­nant that the north­ern venue, where the “cor­rupt PNM” car­ried out their deals, con­tin­ued to be the ren­dezvous point for her min­is­ters seek­ing to pat­tern them­selves on what she may have con­sid­ered a north­ern cul­ture of cor­rup­tion.

There still hangs the feel­ing that the can­cel­la­tion of the In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade was an at­tempt to shift the fo­cus from the north, more so be­cause there have been no ex­plo­sions or at­tacks; even the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice seemed un­aware of any spe­cial dan­ger that could have posed a threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty if the In­de­pen­dence Pa­rade had been held as usu­al.

A ma­jor shift in the coun­try’s tra­di­tion­al close align­ment, in­deed in be­ing a leader in Cari­com for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tions, pro­grammes and poli­cies, has been dic­tat­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter.  She has gone as far as say­ing that the rest of Cari­com can pur­sue re­gion­al­ism while her in­ter­ests are those of T&T. She has dis­missed the Cari­com pol­i­cy of keep­ing the Caribbean Sea as a Zone of Peace against the erup­tion of state-led vi­o­lence in the wa­ters of the re­gion.

As a means of pur­su­ing the ob­jec­tive of hav­ing the USA grant OFAC li­cences to the Drag­on Gas project, the PM has al­so shift­ed from the tra­di­tion­al T&T-Cari­com pol­i­cy of non-in­ter­fer­ence in the in­ter­nal af­fairs of sov­er­eign coun­tries, with zeal­ous sup­port and ad­vo­ca­cy for the US bat­tle­ships to deal vi­o­lent­ly with Venezuela’s al­leged nar­co-traf­fick­ers.

The as­sault on the URP/CEPEP pro­grammes with their greater con­cen­tra­tions in the north and up the East-West Cor­ri­dor is an­oth­er ma­jor ex­am­ple of a re­moval of re­sources from what can be con­sid­ered PNM ter­ri­to­ry.

Emerg­ing most re­cent­ly are the still-to-be-ful­ly-iden­ti­fied al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, said to num­ber 20,000. How and for what pur­pose the em­ploy­ment pro­gramme is to be put; what kinds of skills they will at­tract; and how jobs are to be dis­trib­uted will tell in­ter­est­ing sto­ries.

The most re­cent ap­point­ment of a new Chief Jus­tice is very clear­ly a ma­jor move­ment to shift ju­di­cial pow­er away from a per­ceived fo­cus in the north.

I shall con­tin­ue.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, and grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and the St Au­gus­tine–In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.