Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

Yes, trans­for­ma­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion to meet the ad­min­is­tra­tive needs of the so­ci­ety for rel­e­vant and qual­i­ty gov­er­nance is ab­solute­ly re­quired. But to achieve such an ob­jec­tive re­quires the ma­jor eth­no-so­cio-po­lit­i­cal groups in Trinidad and To­ba­go to ar­rive at a place where they can con­clude for them­selves that a shar­ing of pow­er in gov­ern­ment, the eco­nom­ic wealth of the coun­try, and the so­cial and cul­tur­al pres­tige can be in the in­ter­est of a na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

One con­so­la­tion that we can have is that the chal­lenges list­ed above are not unique to our home­land. In near­ly every plur­al so­ci­ety stud­ied around the world, the so­cial sci­en­tists find the prob­lems are the same. In such so­ci­eties, dif­fer­ent for­mu­las have been ad­vo­cat­ed and tried.

Those at­tempts in­clude hav­ing the eth­nic­i­ties take con­trol of dif­fer­ent seg­ments of the so­ci­ety, with a shar­ing of the eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal, cul­tur­al, re­li­gious, ed­u­ca­tion­al, and tech­ni­cal pow­er, de­vised and built in­to a na­tion­al plat­form.

Ralph Pre­m­das has cap­tured el­e­ments of such con­flict in plur­al so­ci­eties such as T&T and Guyana—Eth­nic Con­flict and De­vel­op­ment. More wide­ly, coun­tries in parts of Asia-Pa­cif­ic, such as Sin­ga­pore, Malaysia, In­done­sia, Papua New Guinea, and Fi­ji, through a pol­i­cy re­sem­bling man­aged in­te­gra­tion, have achieved a mea­sure of sta­bil­i­ty.

One po­lit­i­cal-con­sti­tu­tion­al plat­form ex­per­i­ment­ed with is to have a dis­per­sion of po­lit­i­cal pow­er, rather than it be­ing con­cen­trat­ed in one group, one par­ty, in which the win­ner takes all and leaves the rest to “suck po­lit­i­cal salt” based on op­po­si­tion­ist pol­i­tics.

Even in coun­tries where the pop­u­la­tion is large­ly ho­mo­ge­neous, such as In­dia and the Philip­pines, the con­flicts vary over re­li­gion, the hold­ing of po­lit­i­cal pow­er by one group over the oth­er, and most nat­u­ral­ly re­sult in dis­rup­tive po­lit­i­cal con­flict over the skewed shar­ing of the spoils.

It is well-known clos­er to home that his­tor­i­cal white racism in the USA, Great Britain, parts of Eu­rope and else­where in the in­dus­tri­al world means racial con­flict is re­al. So too in our next-door Cari­com neigh­bours, Guyana and Suri­name, with mixed pop­u­la­tions, there is con­flict.

I cov­ered elec­tions in Para­mari­bo, and while not ful­ly un­der­stand­ing the ram­i­fi­ca­tions and seem­ing­ly myr­i­ad eth­nic amal­ga­ma­tions re­flect­ed in the par­ties, clear­ly ef­forts have been made to avoid ex­clu­sion.

I make ref­er­ence to those states just in pass­ing, and as a means of in­di­cat­ing to read­ers that the eth­nic, re­li­gious, eco­nom­ic and so­cial con­tes­ta­tions over pow­er in T&T are far from be­ing unique. More­over, that in many such coun­tries, ex­per­i­ments in pow­er shar­ing have been made, of course with dif­fer­ing lev­els of suc­cess and fail­ure.

Our prob­lems are ex­ag­ger­at­ed be­cause of the small size of the coun­try, which cre­ates greater in­ten­si­ty sur­round­ing the is­sues, as the con­tests over pow­er, au­thor­i­ty, eco­nom­ic space, et al, are con­gest­ed in a small work­ing area.

Even so, “Small is Al­so Beau­ti­ful”, EF Schu­mach­er. In our in­stance, gen­er­a­tions of Africans, In­di­ans, Dou­glas, Chi­nese, Syr­i­ans, Por­tuguese, and a range of ad­mix­tures of peo­ple have lived close to each oth­er: who “stay for who child”, “who eat out of who pot” and on and on.

The un­de­ni­able fact is that the two ma­jor eth­nic groups in T&T, Afro and In­do-Tri­nis, have lived to­geth­er in small spaces over gen­er­a­tions. They have shared cul­tur­al prod­ucts and traits; cel­e­brat­ed in the cer­e­monies of each oth­er in towns, vil­lages and cities; and this is dif­fer­ent from the ex­pe­ri­ences of eth­ni­cal­ly di­verse coun­tries in which the groups are sep­a­rat­ed in time and space, which makes for ig­no­rance of each oth­er, and al­so the es­tab­lish­ment of bar­ri­ers to har­mo­ny.

As this col­umn has dealt pre­vi­ous­ly and con­tin­u­ous­ly with our di­vi­sions and con­flicts, I con­tend that while not lay­ing the blame ex­clu­sive­ly on politi­cians and their meth­ods and ob­jec­tives of po­lit­i­cal mo­bil­i­sa­tion of the poli­ty, they have the ma­jor re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the gen­er­a­tions of eth­nic con­flict in the so­ci­ety. Those re­al­i­ties are eas­i­ly dis­cerned in the cam­paigns of the par­ties and the elec­tion re­sults over the decades – don’t be­lieve me, check it for your­self.

“How a par­ty cam­paigns; so will it gov­ern,” was a slo­gan used by the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee back in the 1970s. The times and the cam­paigns of the two ma­jor par­ties have borne out the wis­dom of the claim by NJAC. Once again, the read­er does not have to ac­cept what I have writ­ten; check the elec­tion da­ta of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion to see the racial di­vide in the vot­ing pat­terns over decades of gen­er­al elec­tions.

The is­sue fac­ing us is: how is this so­ci­ety go­ing to avoid the in­evitable, open racial con­flict, which, if it comes, will be the nat­ur­al con­se­quence of the pol­i­tics of hate, spite­ful­ness, and the at­tempts to sep­a­rate the so­ci­ety as a means of win­ning and hold­ing on to pow­er in the in­ter­est of them­selves and cho­sen groups of cit­i­zens.

How do we get cit­i­zens to pull back from the precipice of racial con­flict, which, if left to reach its nat­ur­al boil­ing point, can ex­plode and leave a so­ci­ety in the con­struc­tion of a ru­ined ef­fort of mul­ti-eth­nic ex­per­i­ment?

I shall con­tin­ue.

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.