Tony Fras­er

No one gen­uine­ly dis­cern­ing of the state of pol­i­tics in T&T and the world should be sur­prised at the mea­sure of dis­be­lief, cyn­i­cism, blind sup­port and equal­ly blind op­po­si­tion to the very se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion that a group of peo­ple has been plan­ning to as­sas­si- nate Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and three of her Cab­i­net min­is­ters.Here is the Prime Min­is­ter not send­ing her Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty but com­ing to the pop­u­la­tion (this is af­ter the so patent back­room, or­ches­trat­ed leaks of the pre­vi­ous day) and putting her rep­u­ta­tion and the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment on the line, in­form­ing about and giv­ing con­text to a plot to as­sas­si­nate her and her min­is­ters.

More­over, she was sup­port­ed in her ef­fort by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice who at­test­ed to the as­sas­si­na­tion plot, and in the back­ground the head of the De­fence Force who sought to lend the weight of his of­fice to the al­le­ga­tions. But even be­fore the state­ments are fin­ished there are the cyn­ics on ra­dio talk shows and so­cial me­dia send­ing mes­sages across the world, those so mind­ed say­ing that the al­leged plot is a hoax.

In­deed, in­side the news con­fer­ence stu­dio, Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs, who at the best of times seems in­ca­pable of ex­ud­ing con­fi­dence and rigour, recog­nis­es a mea­sure of dis­be­lief among a few re­porters, so much so that he finds it nec­es­sary to say to them they could choose to be­lieve or not, to dis­be­lieve would be their pre­rog­a­tive, but that the plot has been dis­cov­ered and the po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing it.But to bol­ster the strength of the al­le­ga­tions, the CoP in­di­cates that a dozen peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed and among them mem­bers (or for­mer mem­bers) of the po­lice and army.

But notwith­stand­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and the se­cu­ri­ty forces go­ing this far to con­vince the scep­tics, the dis­be­lief con­tin­ues. Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar went one step fur­ther and con­sult­ed with the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, and se­cured a con­fi­den­tial meet­ing for him and the com­mis­sion­er.Out of such a de­ci­sion, the Prime Min­is­ter must have hoped to get a buy-in from the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion for the sell­ing of the al­le­ga­tion to that sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion sup­port­ive of Dr Row­ley. In ad­di­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter must have been hop­ing to in­flu­ence those not aligned to ei­ther side.

But as we know, Dr Row­ley, al­though so far keep­ing the con­fi­dence about the de­tails of the plot, has deemed it to be over­re­ac­tion by the Gov­ern­ment and be­hind it a plan to ex­tend the state of emer­gency.So here is what must be re­ferred to as a very se­ri­ous threat against the Prime Min­is­ter and three of her min­is­ters, with the po­lice and army as points of ref­er­ence, and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al all there to give cred­i­bil­i­ty and stiff­en­ing to the claims, and yet there are sig­nif­i­cant pock­ets of dis­be­lief in the so­ci­ety.

How could such peo­ple, the an­a­lyst may want to ask, so be­lieve that a Prime Min­is­ter could be seek­ing to de­ceive and toss the coun­try in­to tur­moil to achieve some sec­tar­i­an, short-term ob­jec­tive?What is more, how could peo­ple, those on­line, the callers and oth­ers, think that a gov­ern­ment, any gov­ern­ment, would place it­self in jeop­ardy sim­ply to win pub­lic sym­pa­thy which would fiz­zle if the al­le­ga­tions turn in­to a hoax?

Un­der­stand­ably, the cyn­ics and be­liev­ers should be di­vid­ed in­to groups: the trib­al sup­port­ers of the rul­ing and op­po­si­tion par­ties who can be eas­i­ly led around by their noses, who will see no evil, hear no evil about their par­ty and tribe but will eas­i­ly agree that the claims and ac­tions of the oth­er are false.This phe­nom­e­non of blind loy­al­ty has se­ri­ous­ly blight­ed the pol­i­tics; it has giv­en us a mass from which there can be drawn no crit­i­cal think­ing, just dri­ven by trib­al in­stincts. What it does in times such as those we are in now is to make pub­lic dis­course mean­ing­less as the trib­al, un­think­ing loy­al­ty of­fers noth­ing con­struc­tive to in­fuse the dis­cus­sion and in­form the so­ci­ety.

Those who sup­port the rul­ing par­ty will have us be­lieve with­out ques­tion­ing that the drug deal­ers are out to get the Prime Min­is­ter for smash­ing their drug rings, and that the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion is hope­less­ly out of touch. On the oth­er side there are those telling the na­tion that Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar rep­re­sents the quin­tes­sence of Machi­avel­lian in­trigue and so no one should be­lieve any­thing she and her Gov- ern­ment say.Out­side of those en­trenched blocs, there are many whose scep­ti­cism is based on the re­al­i­ty of a po­lit­i­cal cul­ture which has been de­vel­op­ing over the decades. That cul­ture is found­ed in Anan­cy pol­i­tics, who could out­smart who, de­cep­tion be­ing the first line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the be­lief that at their very core, those who would en­gage in pol­i­tics are in­her­ent­ly cor­rupt and so in­ca­pable of truth.

This is the re­al­i­ty of the pol­i­tics de­vel­oped by the po­lit­i­cal par­ties; it of­fers lit­tle hope for ra­tio­nal think­ing and mean­ing­ful po­lit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion. There are those who would say that cul­ture has been very de­lib­er­ate­ly de­vel­oped in the post-in­de­pen­dence pe­ri­od so that the par­ties can de­pend on trib­al loy­al­ties. What seems fair to con­clude is that a Prime Min­is­ter, the CoP, the De­fence Force com­man­der, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and threat­ened min­is­ters could not hold the pop­u­la­tion in such con­tempt that they be­lieve they could so de­ceive. There­fore, it must be that there is sub­stance to the al­leged as­sas­si­na­tion plot.

But like oth­ers, this colum­nist has a healthy scep­ti­cism of politi­cians and their par­ties. What is more, politi­cians and their par­ties have earned the dis­be­lief which peo­ple have of them.There­fore, the al­le­ga­tion is be­fore the Gov­ern­ment and the se­cu­ri­ty forces to be proven, and nei­ther one of the two en­ti­ties could seek to lay blame on each oth­er for some faux pas which blocks the way for­ward.Noth­ing short of an un­qual­i­fied con­vic­tion in the courts would sat­is­fy those with doubts and there can be no long drawn-out in­ves­ti­ga­tion and de­lib­er­a­tion: the po­lice must go out and find the ev­i­dence to con­vince the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions there is a ba­sis for the lay­ing of charges.