Apolo­gies to read­ers for break­ing the promise to con­tin­ue to­day from last week’s col­umn on our con­sum­ing world of vi­o­lence. I have di­vert­ed to ex­am­ine is­sues sur­round­ing the af­ford­abil­i­ty of im­ple­ment­ing the in­clu­sion of the steel­pan on the na­tion­al Coat of Arms (CoA). At its core, plac­ing the steel­pan on the CoA is an ef­fort to achieve a mea­sure of har­mo­ny among the war­ring so­cio-eco­nom­ic and eth­nic groups by al­low­ing us all to iden­ti­fy with T&T’s great­est con­tri­bu­tion to world civil­i­sa­tion.

In his­tor­i­cal terms, im­ple­men­ta­tion must en­gen­der a con­tin­u­ous re­flec­tion on the sac­ri­fi­cial and ge­nius con­tri­bu­tion of those pi­o­neer­ing orig­i­na­tors of the pans and the bands, the tuners, ear­ly play­ers, arrangers, and the com­mu­ni­ties around which the steel­pan and the steel­band were cre­at­ed.

We must al­so nev­er for­get the “pan pick-up­pers” as de­scribed to me by the great Prince Bat­son, who was one of the first lead­ers of the bands which tran­si­tioned in­to the Trinidad All Stars. Prince said he was nei­ther a play­er, tuner, nor arranger; his job was to cap­ture pans to be turned in­to in­stru­ments.

In do­ing so, he faced the ever-present threat of a po­lice “bootoo” reg­is­ter­ing in his back as he ran the course of the Dry Riv­er with the pans. One can get emo­tion­al about where this thing came from and the cost of it to those who were deemed to be hooli­gans and crim­i­nals “beat­ing” this “noisy in­stru­ment”; men get jail just for beat­ing “ah pan”. They re­main in his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive the con­trib­u­tors, the true achiev­ers to whom the CoA ho­n­our must be di­rect­ed; what’s the cost of ig­nor­ing such sac­ri­fice and ge­nius?

The is­sue is about mea­sur­ing and be­ing able to af­ford the cost of im­ple­ment­ing what was passed by the Par­lia­ment with to­tal sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion. How is the val­ue of the cre­ation of the pans and the bands in ho­n­our of these men and women to be judged in com­par­i­son with oth­er costs, and what is the cost of drag­ging them in­to an un­seem­ly and un­pro­fes­sion­al bac­cha­nal?

Two po­lit­i­cal-so­ci­o­log­i­cal con­cepts (Richard Harthshorne) at­tract­ed my at­ten­tion over the week, with all of the above in mind. Cen­trifu­gal and cen­tripetal forces are func­tion­ing in a pop­u­la­tion. In the in­stance of the first one, cen­trifu­gal forces in a plur­al so­ci­ety give im­pe­tus and en­cour­age­ment to the var­i­ous groups to con­tin­ue pulling apart; the ef­fect serves to fur­ther weak­en the bond of uni­ty in the coun­try.

In con­trast, cen­tripetal forces trig­gered by na­tion­al sym­bol­i­sa­tion (Pan in the Na­tion­al Coat of Arms) can work to­wards bind­ing to­geth­er groups dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed by wealth, pol­i­tics, eth­nic and re­li­gious per­sua­sions and can re­duce the pos­si­bil­i­ty of con­flict and frag­men­ta­tion.

The post­pone­ment of the plac­ing of the steel­pan on the na­tion­al Coat of Arms turns loose a cen­trifu­gal force in an al­ready di­vid­ed so­ci­ety: “The de­ci­sion to de­fer im­ple­men­ta­tion is re­gret­table, in­con­sis­tent with the spir­it of uni­ty demon­strat­ed in Par­lia­ment, and not in the in­ter­est of cul­tur­al ad­vance­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” PanTrin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore.

There can be no more rel­e­vant and ap­pro­pri­ate quote than the above.

Cen­trifu­gal forces work­ing against cen­tripetal, the for­mer a rea­son for di­vi­sive­ness let loose in so­ci­ety by an ef­fec­tive de­nial of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a de­ci­sion made in the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment and with a patent­ly in­ad­e­quate ex­cuse lack­ing in rig­or­ous de­tails.

Even more in­ci­sive­ly, what are the cost com­par­isons with oth­er pro­ject­ed spend­ing?

The steel­pan as a sym­bol of na­tion­al pride and iden­ti­ty placed on the na­tion­al Coat of Arms is a pow­er­ful state­ment which all groups in the so­ci­ety can en­joy, iden­ti­fy with as one which has come from with­in a Trinidad and To­ba­go, once soaked in colo­nial rule and so­cial-class dis­crim­i­na­tion by the rulers of the pe­ri­od.

In plac­ing the steel­pan on the Coat of Arms, we will al­so val­ue the con­tri­bu­tions to the in­stru­ment’s pro­tec­tion with the pos­si­bil­i­ty for an evo­lu­tion and those who pro­tect­ed the pan and en­cour­aged the play­ers. Al­bert Gomes, rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil, Lennox Pierre, the at­tor­ney who sup­port­ed and worked in the in­ter­est of the recog­ni­tion of the pan when that was not pop­u­lar.

As pre­mier/prime min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams gave sup­port to the pan, and prime min­is­ters Patrick Man­ning de­clared the steel­pan the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, Dr Kei­th Row­ley passed it in­to law, and Bas­deo Pan­day made land for the con­struc­tion of a pan head­quar­ters avail­able. Hav­ing the steel­pan right­ful­ly placed on the CoA is now rel­e­gat­ed to an un­pre­dictable fu­ture.

If, as the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dave Tan­coo has plead­ed, the in­abil­i­ty to fi­nance and or­gan­ise, the an­nounce­ment of the de­fer­ral should have been done with a full ex­pla­na­tion of the el­e­ments of the costs, the time fac­tors in­volved and the projects which took prece­dence over im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pan on the CoA. In­stead, stealth and dis­re­spect­ful­ly scant in­for­ma­tion pre­vailed.

How­ev­er, the Row­ley-led gov­ern­ment, which passed the leg­is­la­tion, is al­so guilty of not mak­ing ad­e­quate prepa­ra­tions for im­ple­men­ta­tion. On re­flec­tion, for the PNM, it was an elec­tion ma­m­aguy.

The dis­re­spect of hav­ing this vul­gar and dis­rup­tive tus­sle over the recog­ni­tion of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment is the nat­ur­al out­come of low-qual­i­ty par­ty pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er—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, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and St Au­gus­tine—In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.