There is an in­ci­vil­i­ty, a kind of crass­ness which has de­vel­oped over the decades in the pub­lic dis­course of the so­ci­ety. It has been ini­ti­at­ed main­ly by politi­cians seek­ing to hold on to and achieve pow­er, that be­ing the name of the game. It is tak­ing the coun­try down the road to ul­ti­mate self-de­struc­tion.

Let’s start at the lev­el of the pol­i­tics in To­ba­go. There have been fun­da­men­tal, struc­tur­al dif­fi­cul­ties in the po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ad­min­is­tra­tion of To­ba­go from the 1950s, when that bold de­fend­er of the rights of To­bag­o­ni­ans, the ven­er­a­ble Mr A.P.T “Far­go” James, be­gan pe­ti­tion­ing for a bet­ter deal for his home is­land. Many have fol­lowed, in­clud­ing Mr A.N.R. Robin­son, Mr Ho­choy Charles, Mr Orville Lon­don now Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

Con­sti­tu­tion­al changes have been en­act­ed to more ef­fec­tive­ly gov­ern the re­la­tion­ship be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad. The changes have not reached the lev­el of au­ton­o­my and self-gov­ern­ing sta­tus re­quired by those who be­lieve that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly needs greater lat­i­tude to ad­e­quate­ly look af­ter the wel­fare of the peo­ple on the is­land. And the above is notwith­stand­ing the fact that two To­bag­o­ni­ans (Mr Robin­son and the in­cum­bent Dr Kei­th Row­ley) have been prime min­is­ter of the twin-is­land state.

What is and has been dis­rup­tive and non-pro­duc­tive has been what pass­es for pub­lic di­a­logue and in­ter­ac­tion be­tween Port-of-Spain and Scar­bor­ough. To en­gage their dif­fer­ences, politi­cians on both sides play out their con­tentions in pub­lic brawls in a most un­savoury and ill-man­nered way. In­stead of pro­duc­ing a greater work­ing re­la­tion­ship to­wards achieve­ment of the os­ten­si­ble ob­jec­tive, their acidic con­flicts have in­fect­ed and in­flu­enced bit­ter­ness be­tween and amongst cit­i­zens and in­sti­tu­tions on both is­lands.

Those ex­changes are lead­ing in­ex­orably down a path which will sure­ly not be in the in­ter­est of the na­tion.

As we know, the re­crim­i­na­tion and neg­a­tiv­i­ty are at the heart of pol­i­tics in Trinidad and are ac­cen­tu­at­ed on the “big is­land” by racial con­flict. At the heart of the con­flict in Trinidad, like in To­ba­go, is the de­sire by the politi­cians and their par­ties to ac­quire and hold pow­er sup­pos­ed­ly in the in­ter­est of their tribes.

Both sides have worked earnest­ly and clev­er­ly, in a very de­struc­tive man­ner over decades, to in­duce each tribe in­to be­liev­ing it is be­ing preyed up­on, dis­in­her­it­ed and dis­crim­i­nat­ed against by the oth­er. Seem­ing­ly un­no­ticed and un­car­ing of the groups, crim­i­nal­i­ty is wreck­ing the coun­try, as­sist­ed by the en­er­gy utilised to car­ry on the con­tes­ta­tions. Coun­ter­ing crime through a range of an­ti-crime mea­sures, leg­is­la­tion, polic­ing, through the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, hu­man en­deav­ours, fam­i­ly life ef­forts, the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and more, is be­ing robbed of the en­er­gy ex­pend­ed on the pow­er quests.

So con­flict­ual it has all be­come that gen­uine ef­forts to com­bat the re­al prob­lems are de­nied the con­cert­ed na­tion­al ef­fort re­quired. The ben­e­fi­cia­ries are the crim­i­nals.

The is­sue which needs to be pur­sued with in­sight, en­er­gy and what­ev­er mea­sure of to­geth­er­ness can be mus­tered in this dis­cor­dant en­vi­ron­ment, is how to work to­wards res­o­lu­tion of prob­lems with­out an­tag­o­nism and an­i­mos­i­ty. Do we have re­spect­ed states per­sons who can in­ter­vene in both trib­al sit­u­a­tions? If we don’t find a way, the so­ci­ety is doomed to fail­ure.