?Every time some­one or some group stands up against the Gov­ern­ment on is­sues af­fect­ing the peo­ple of T&T, Colm Im­bert and his col­leagues brand such a stand as "po­lit­i­cal." By so do­ing he at­tempts to di­min­ish the is­sue be­cause in his mind be­ing "po­lit­i­cal" is prob­a­bly a bad thing. Pol­i­tics, ac­cord­ing to Wikipedia, is a process by which groups of peo­ple make de­ci­sions. The term is gen­er­al­ly ap­plied to be­hav­iour with­in civ­il gov­ern­ments, but pol­i­tics has been ob­served in all hu­man group in­ter­ac­tions, in­clud­ing cor­po­rate, aca­d­e­m­ic and re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions. It con­sists of "so­cial re­la­tions in­volv­ing au­thor­i­ty or pow­er" and refers to the reg­u­la­tion of a po­lit­i­cal unit, and to the meth­ods and tac­tics used to for­mu­late and ap­ply pol­i­cy. Min­is­ter Im­bert usu­al­ly speaks of "po­lit­i­cal" as it per­tains to meth­ods and tac­tics used to for­mu­late and ap­ply pol­i­cy by civ­il or even of­fi­cial po­lit­i­cal groups.

The very poli­cies that his col­leagues would oth­er­wise force down our un­sus­pect­ing throats. Iron­i­cal­ly, he does not view as "po­lit­i­cal" the ex­am­ples set by him, his leader and his col­leagues when they at­tempt to take away the rights of cit­i­zens; squan­der the re­sources un­der man­age­ment for the cit­i­zens; keep cit­i­zens in­se­cure and afraid; pre­vent cit­i­zens from hav­ing ac­cess to ef­fi­cient ser­vices such as health­care, ed­u­ca­tion and the like; pe­nalise cit­i­zens for sav­ing and se­cur­ing their fu­ture; cov­er up of­fi­cial cor­rup­tion, and en­sure on­ly a few good friends pros­per. In a civilised, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety, pol­i­cy mak­ing should be about in­creas­ing the rights of cit­i­zens, en­sur­ing that cit­i­zens grow and de­vel­op, en­sur­ing that cit­i­zens are safe, en­sur­ing that cit­i­zens get the best ed­u­ca­tion and health­care, en­sur­ing that sav­ings are re­ward­ed, en­sur­ing that cor­rup­tion is re­moved from the sys­tem and that every cit­i­zen en­joys the re­sources pro­vid­ed to the na­tion.

So yes, when we march against more tax­es we are be­ing "po­lit­i­cal." When we march against cor­rup­tion, we are be­ing "po­lit­i­cal." When we march against the draft con­sti­tu­tion, we are be­ing "po­lit­i­cal." When we march against the de­struc­tion of our en­vi­ron­ment, we are be­ing "po­lit­i­cal." When we march against high food prices poor health­care, poor ed­u­ca­tion, and ar­ro­gance in gov­ern­ment, we are be­ing "po­lit­i­cal." And yes, Min­is­ter Im­bert, we will con­tin­ue to be "po­lit­i­cal" be­cause it is the on­ly way we will get a bet­ter so­ci­ety for all. Af­ter all, we can­not de­pend on our "rep­re­sen­ta­tives" for that.

?Garvin Nicholas

Via e-mail