Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

I'd in­tend­ed to look on silent­ly at the spec­ta­cle of the erst­while Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter's dark night of the soul, but a per­son with a for­eign ac­cent I met last week changed that. The per­son was in­censed at the docil­i­ty of Tri­nis in the face of scoundrels, and de­mand­ed to know why we took this. "We would nev­er stand for this in Eu­rope," they said.

The words "Sil­vio Berlus­coni" and "Do­minique Strauss-Kahn" and "Jean-Marie Le Pen" were on the tip my tongue, but to speak them would have meant a con­ver­sa­tion with the moral­ist, and it was just too big a sac­ri­fice. But it did crys­tallise the tru­ly dis­taste­ful, even for Tri­ni pol­i­tics, part of the on­go­ing death of a thou­sand cuts in­flict­ed on the for­mer min­is­ter.

The is­sue, in this col­umn any­way, is not whether the ac­cu­sa­tions have sub­stance. We'll know that soon enough. The is­sue that jumps out is the pos­ture of the var­i­ous moral­is­ing agents–the me­dia, the NGO/civ­il so­ci­ety faux do-good­ers, and the not in the least, the il­lus­tri­ous Op­po­si­tion–and the ef­fect the hys­te­ria is cre­at­ing, com­mon­ly known (among in­formed peo­ple) as a "moral pan­ic."

Look­ing at the cir­cus, Mr Warn­er's guilt or in­no­cence is in­ci­den­tal to the way these ac­cu­sa­tions, and the ver­i­ta­ble vol­cano of in­for­ma­tion, are be­ing de­ployed. The ubiq­ui­ty and zeal of dis­sem­i­na­tion has con­vinced on­ly those who were al­ready con­vinced, wait­ing to be con­vinced, or wait­ing for some trig­ger to loose their an­i­mus.

The rest, who had no rea­son to de­spise Mr Warn­er, and who sup­port­ed him, are not near­ly so san­guine as the moral­is­ing mi­nor­i­ty for whom there's no dis­tinc­tion be­tween the de­fin­i­tive­ly il­le­gal, the sleazy, the du­bi­ous, and the very broad grey ar­eas in pol­i­tics and busi­ness de­fend­ed by bat­tal­ions of high-priced lawyers, com­mon­ly known as "busi­ness as usu­al out­side Pollyan­na land."The moral­is­tic mi­nor­i­ty on­ly un­der­stand am­bi­gu­i­ty when their own busi­ness is in­volved.

Who throw­ing stones in PoS could with­stand even the most per­func­to­ry crit­i­cal in­quiry in­to their own af­fairs? Who from where these ac­cu­sa­tions orig­i­nate? In the world of Ru­pert Mur­doch, Sil­vio Berlus­coni, Vladimir Putin, Guan­tanamo Bay, Li­bor rig­ging, Wall Street, multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions' plung­ing en­tire na­tions in­to war for their nat­ur­al re­sources–guilt is an elas­tic con­cept.

It's not like Tri­nis are back­ward in this re­gard. You might won­der at the rush to pelt stones when you're in a coun­try where the last Prime Min­is­ter hand­ed over state re­sources to his spir­i­tu­al ad­vi­sor, named his wife to Cab­i­net, squan­dered a third-of-a-tril­lion dol­lars, fi­nanced the same gangs who are now eat­ing the coun­try alive, en­abled Cli­co, and re­mains a hero, not charged, bare­ly ac­cused of any­thing.

Nei­ther is his suc­ces­sor much dif­fer­ent. The il­lus­tri­ous Leader of the Op­po­si­tion was fired, not re­signed, from that crim­i­nal­ly cor­rupt gov­ern­ment against whom no charges have yet been laid, or will be laid.He ran against his own par­ty dur­ing a gen­er­al elec­tion, in­stead of re­sign­ing and run­ning as an in­de­pen­dent, as would have been both eth­i­cal and ho­n­ourable.I could con­tin­ue on this tack but, to re­peat, there re­mains the re­al is­sue hid­ing in here: the or­ches­tra­tion of a moral pan­ic.

If you read the pa­pers, lis­ten to the talk shows, and lis­ten to the "art­sy set" (you last saw them hun­kered around Wayne Kublals­ingh watch­ing him play a hunger mas') you get the im­pres­sion of a moral es­cha­to­log­i­cal event. The world is end­ing, and the com­men­tari­at is be­side it­self.The news­pa­pers glee­ful­ly pile sto­ry af­ter sto­ry. But is that what the rest of the coun­try is think­ing?

Mr Warn­er's con­stituents are cry­ing for him to stay. A Hin­du pun­dit likened him to Hanu­man. He is de­fend­ed by In­di­an grannies and the black and brown man in the street. Their point? What­ev­er else he's done, Mr Warn­er has done the one thing all his de­trac­tors have failed to do: his job. Ac­cu­sa­tions of in­ter­na­tion­al malfea­sance are mean­ing­less.

If and when they ma­te­ri­alise in charges and an ar­rest, a nex' mark could play. But un­til then, who cares? What re­al coun­try con­ducts its af­fairs with a view to "how it go look" to non-cit­i­zens? The US? UK? EU na­tions? Ja­maica? Bar­ba­dos?

Here lies the crux of the moral pan­ic: the con­trast be­tween Mr Warn­er's sup­port­ers and his crit­ics: the Cre­ole world vs the South of the Ca­roni world. The rage to con­demn Mr Warn­er is cog­nisant of this. The crit­i­cism of him is al­so a crit­i­cism of his sup­port­ers, "those peo­ple" who don't un­der­stand the so­phis­ti­cat­ed con­cepts of moral­i­ty that the peo­ple in PoS do. Hence, we can't trust any of them. But we al­ready knew that.

The sec­ond re­mark­able thing is the tableau of Mr Warn­er's seem­ing­ly demigod sta­tus in his In­di­an con­stituen­cy, which does se­ri­ous vi­o­lence to the Cre­ole mythol­o­gy of eth­nic in­evitabil­i­ty, ped­dled by the PNM and its al­lies in the Cre­ole me­dia as des­tiny.

Nat­u­ral­ly, this tableau must be paint­ed as un­nat­ur­al and per­verse. Mr Warn­er has been here be­fore. When it was be­com­ing clear to even the most hard­ened de­nier that the me­dia were con­gen­i­tal­ly bi­ased, the Ex­press's front page of Ju­ly 26, 2000, fea­tured a car­toon car­i­ca­ture of Mr Warn­er, with spec­ta­cles whose lens­es were in­scribed with the words "Black Cau­cus of Jour­nal­ists". Its ed­i­to­r­i­al be­gan: "The Black Cau­cus of Jour­nal­ists, Mr Warn­er? From what cesspool of make be­lieve did that one spring from?" Hys­te­ria much?

I should say here that Mr Warn­er lost my sup­port and sym­pa­thy when he "man­aged" the de­par­ture of Dwayne Gibbs. How­ev­er, for their zeal­ous ir­rup­tion of my­opia and hypocrisy, the me­dia and Cre­ole in­tel­li­gentsia need­ed to be re­mind­ed of who the re­al crim­i­nals are.