by Jonathan Bhag­gan

As I walked in­to the doors of the gym last week I froze. I saw a man with dread­locks, a mous­tache and a no­tice­ably ar­ro­gant de­meanour and thought it was Fitzger­ald Hinds. I im­me­di­ate­ly pre­pared my­self to be blast­ed off my feet by hot air.

The man stood up from the bench press to his full height of six feet. Up­on re­al­is­ing how tall this man was, I knew that this was not Fitzger­ald Hinds, but a dop­pel­ganger with much larg­er bi­ceps and a taller frame.

Per­haps this man with his strik­ing re­sem­blance to Hinds could be the an­swer to the cri­sis of crim­i­nal­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Per­haps, if un­der the cov­er of dark­ness we could re­place the sit­ting Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, then we could solve the para­dox Trinidad and To­ba­go now faces.

Giv­en that the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has re­fused to re­sign in the face of an es­ca­lat­ing mur­der rate and harsh crit­i­cism, what can be done?

The an­swer is sim­ple. We put Fitzger­ald Hind’s body dou­ble in a grey suit, bathe him in ex­pen­sive cologne and have him sit in on Cab­i­net meet­ings and say noth­ing.

We would, of course, need the Ho­n­ourable Fitzger­ald Hinds’ con­sent for this to work. We will need to con­vince him that his hard work has earned him a long va­ca­tion.

It is, of course, not Mr Hinds’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to make the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go feel safe, as he right­ful­ly said. Nei­ther does the Ho­n­ourable Fitzger­ald Hinds take part in any po­lice or na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions. To para­phrase what Mr Hinds said in a press con­fer­ence, he is sim­ply there to re­mind the dif­fer­ent na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies of the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy and to di­rect funds where they need to go.

Mr Hinds is not re­spon­si­ble for the mur­der rate, which, ac­cord­ing to crim­i­nol­o­gists, is set to reach all-time highs this year un­less dras­tic ac­tion is tak­en.

Mr Hinds is not re­spon­si­ble for mak­ing the cit­i­zens feel safe. There­fore, I will ap­proach him with my plan to let his dop­pel­ganger re­place him in his func­tion as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

We must en­sure that this gym dop­pel­ganger wears a loose-fit­ting suit to hide his mus­cles so that crim­i­nals will be un­aware of his mar­tial prowess. This is to en­sure that the next time some­one tries to bribe Mr Fitzger­ald Hinds with a Rolex worth tens of thou­sands of US dol­lars, the Dop­pel­ganger Hinds can im­me­di­ate­ly grab the crim­i­nal, Rolex in hand and wres­tle him to the floor.

Dop­pel­ganger Hinds can make a cit­i­zen’s ar­rests on the spot and beat the liv­ing day­lights out of the or­gan­ised crime boss who tried to bribe the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter.

Dop­pel­ganger Hinds can then hand over this brazen crim­i­nal to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice for an of­fence un­der sec­tion 3 of the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act Chap­ter 11:11.

On May 12, 2022, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter told the me­dia that “Some­one once of­fered me a US$78,000 watch...I chased them out.” I am glad that Mr Hinds had the mas­cu­line prowess to chase away this crim­i­nal but we, the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, de­serve bet­ter. They de­serve a Dop­pel­ganger Hinds that can jump kick the man with the US$78,000 Rolex on­to the floor and then hero­ical­ly re­strain the Rolex Man with one hand while call­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice with the oth­er.

Af­ter per­form­ing the pub­lic ser­vice of ar­rest­ing the Rolex Man, Dop­pel­ganger Hinds can then leave the run­ning of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to who­ev­er is re­spon­si­ble for ac­tu­al­ly do­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions and mak­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go feel safe.

In the evenings, I hope to see Dop­pel­ganger Hinds back at the gym, lift­ing two hun­dred pounds on the bench press and squat­ting even more. He will need his strength to en­sure that he can ve­he­ment­ly de­ny any re­spon­si­bil­i­ty he has for mak­ing the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go feel safe.

Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hind’s tal­ent for blow­ing in­dus­tri­al-grade quan­ti­ties of hot air suf­fi­cient to solve Eu­rope’s need to im­port Russ­ian gas is for­mi­da­ble. We have to en­sure that his dop­pel­ganger does ad­di­tion­al car­dio at the gym to match the lung ca­pac­i­ty of the re­al Hinds.

This is the on­ly log­i­cal way for­ward — to al­low Mr Fitzger­ald Hinds to re­main in of­fice and to in­crease the mus­cle mass and man­pow­er of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty by en­sur­ing that we have not one, but two ver­sions of Fitzger­ald Hinds avail­able to serve the peo­ple of the Re­pub­lic.

Satire

The en­cy­clopae­dia Brit­tan­i­ca de­fines satire as fol­lows “satire, artis­tic form, chiefly lit­er­ary and dra­mat­ic, in which hu­man or in­di­vid­ual vices, fol­lies, abus­es, or short­com­ings are held up to cen­sure by means of ridicule.”

This col­umn is by no means sug­gest­ing that the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter is ridicu­lous, full of vice or wor­thy of cen­sure. Rather, this col­umn is an at­tempt at artistry and lit­er­ary style us­ing metaphors meant to evoke a smile.