Tony Fras­er

?We are in­to a pe­ri­od of na­tion­al shame and dis­grace, call­ing back the cork hat, the kha­ki-clad for­eign­er to lead the na­tives: Cap­tain Bak­er on his horse, 48 years af­ter in­de­pen­dence, un­able as our gov­ern­ments, the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate and the elites of the so­ci­ety have been to cre­ate a self-sus­tain­ing civil­i­sa­tion.

And this is so notwith­stand­ing the fact that in­ter­de­pen­dence is de­mand­ed of 21st cen­tu­ry na­tions. But as Lloyd Best would have said: a civil­i­sa­tion has to have some­thing in hand, a cul­ture, and a set of na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions to be recog­nised as hav­ing self-worth in the glob­al vil­lage. This col­umn, in hold­ing to the po­si­tion that the job of the CoP is one of those which should be held by a na­tion­al, makes no apolo­gies to the view that com­pe­tence and not na­tion­al­ism is the ob­jec­tive re­quired to se­lect a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. In­deed, those who take that po­si­tion do so hav­ing al­ready con­clud­ed that com­pe­tence and for­eign go hand in hand; as do lo­cal and in­com­pe­tence and in­ca­pac­i­ty. As in­di­cat­ed in last week's col­umn, se­lect­ing a CoP is about demon­strat­ing na­tion­al ca­pa­bil­i­ty and con­fi­dence in na­tion­hood; it is about cul­ti­vat­ing a civil­i­sa­tion. The rec­om­men­da­tion to in­stall a for­eign­er, with four oth­ers in the line be­hind him, is in­dica­tive of a re­treat from in­de­pen­dence. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Po­lice Ser­vice is not the on­ly ex­am­ple of this form of non-self. Af­ter 35 years of hav­ing a lo­cal for an arch­bish­op, the Catholic Church here was tak­en back to colo­nial sta­tus hav­ing an Amer­i­can in­stalled as leader, with scraps of an ar­gu­ment be­ing of­fered for a ra­tio­nale.

To lead the mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar state con­struc­tion sec­tor, we had a for­eign­er; to re­float an air­line, we im­port­ed a se­ries of for­eign­ers; we have had in­di­vid­ual for­eign­ers and man­age­ment com­pa­nies take charge of win­ning and pro­cess­ing of wa­ter. Af­ter the ster­ling and cre­ative per­for­mance of Gal­ly Cum­mings as lo­cal coach, in­sert­ing a lo­cal cul­tur­al self in­to the foot­ball and tak­ing us to the brink of qual­i­fi­ca­tion for World Cup 1990, we back-tracked in the decade of the 1990s and be­yond to find for­eign­ers where ever we could rather than build on the lega­cy of the Strike Squad. In­ter­est­ing­ly, this re­turn to learned help­less­ness is oc­cur­ring while en­er­gy multi­na­tion­als such as BP, BG and BHP have placed lo­cals in charge of their op­er­a­tions here. The said lo­cals have pi­o­neered in pre­vi­ous­ly marked-off ar­eas of com­plete for­eign con­trol, such as the con­struc­tion of off-shore plat­forms. The multi­na­tion­als have greater faith in our lo­cals than we do. The grav­i­ty of this shame­ful in­ca­pac­i­ty to rise to na­tion­hood was high­light­ed on Fri­day last as the MPs in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­alised to the na­tion the "bad law" passed by a pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, and agreed to by the en­tire Par­lia­ment, with­out a mur­mur from the so­ci­ety.

But it is not just a mat­ter of bad law; it is law passed with the de­lib­er­ate in­ten­tion to con­tract a for­eign­er be­cause of the colo­nial frame that be­lieves that when there are prob­lems, this neo-colo­nial so­ci­ety could not pos­si­bly han­dle such mat­ters and has to turn to for­eign­ers. But the dis­as­ter does not end there. The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, through in­ad­ver­tence and/or in­com­pe­tence, did not elim­i­nate two peo­ple with pri­or knowl­edge of the process from com­pet­ing un­fair­ly against oth­ers. Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said that the im­pli­ca­tions, both in per­cep­tion and pos­si­bly law for such in­com­pe­tence, are po­ten­tial­ly dire. The prob­lems of this coun­try have been the re­sult of in­com­pe­tence, cor­rupt and self-seek­ing politi­cians at the top of the so­cial and po­lit­i­cal lad­der and those with­out the ca­pac­i­ty to lib­er­ate the so­ci­ety from its colo­nial his­to­ry. That is not xeno­pho­bia; it is a state­ment that in­di­cates that our peo­ple, de­rived from the great civil­i­sa­tions of the world, have got to stop be­ing seen to be in­ca­pable of gov­ern­ing our­selves in the ba­sics of mod­ern so­ci­ety.

This is a com­ment not on the se­nior of­fi­cers in the ser­vice, but rather on the politi­cians and bu­reau­crat­ic class of rulers who have not been able to over­come their deep sense of be­ing sec­ond-class. "They could not say what fed­er­a­tion meant. They are un­able to say what in­de­pen­dence means," ob­served CLR James in his as­sess­ment of the mid­dle class in of­fice in the 1960s. It re­mains true in the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry. But to clin­i­cal­ly un­der­stand why the law was passed is to ap­pre­ci­ate that the Man­ning gov­ern­ment reached to the point of seek­ing a for­eign­er for the of­fice of CoP af­ter it com­plete­ly mis­un­der­stood, mis­han­dled and politi­cised crim­i­nal­i­ty in the so­ci­ety. In­stead of fac­ing the re­al­i­ty of grow­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty, the then gov­ern­ment went in­to de­nial: peo­ple be­ing mur­dered amount­ed to mere col­lat­er­al dam­age; the kid­nap­pings were be­ing faked; the op­po­si­tion was col­lud­ing with crim­i­nals. At a sec­ond stage, the gov­ern­ment be­gan to open­ly en­gage with known crim­i­nals, it sought their as­sis­tance in elec­toral cam­paigns, pub­lic works pro­grammes were turned over to the crim­i­nal en­ter­prise, and the then Prime Min­is­ter went pub­lic with a com­mit­ment to hand state lands over to in­sur­rec­tion­ists.

An hote­lier was put in charge of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as the Prime Min­is­ter min­imised the im­por­tance of ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence to han­dle the port­fo­lio. For over five years he did noth­ing to re­place a min­is­ter who had not achieved re­sults. These were among the ma­jor fac­tors which al­lowed crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty to grow and take hold of the so­ci­ety in the man­ner it has over the last decade; not the sug­gest­ed in­ca­pac­i­ty of a lo­cal as CoP. But the pre­vi­ous Prime Min­is­ter and gov­ern­ment do not have com­plete re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the fail­ures. What of the voic­es of the Op­po­si­tion of the day when the leg­is­la­tion and rules and pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures were be­ing adopt­ed? Whey did they not warn the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty of what the gov­ern­ment was at­tempt­ing. In sim­i­lar man­ner, the lo­cal me­dia failed to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly analyse the un­fold­ing events; dit­to for the in­tel­lec­tu­al elites. But the present Par­lia­ment can­not hide be­hind "the law." Par­lia­ment is sov­er­eign and must find a way out with­out sub­ject­ing the coun­try to this in­dig­ni­ty. One way is to in­stall one of the lo­cal deputies to act as CoP for a year while the leg­is­la­tion and pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures are be­ing fixed.