Gabrielle Ho­sein

In 2000, when I be­came Miss Mas­tana Ba­har, a news­pa­per re­porter asked me about my plans for mar­riage and chil­dren. I re­spond­ed that I didn't sit around dream­ing about mar­riage, but want­ed chil­dren. She al­so asked me if I'd mar­ry a non-In­di­an (be­cause that's one of those na­tion­al ob­ses­sions about In­di­an women, mak­ing us the on­ly group rou­tine­ly asked bla­tant­ly judgy ques­tions about in­ter­ra­cial re­la­tion­ships).

Thanks to the ed­i­tor, a half-page, bold head­line lat­er screamed: "Miss Mas­tana Shock­er. Wants child out of wed­lock. Could mar­ry non-In­di­an."Both form­ing and fill­ing pub­lic taste for sala­cious de­tails about a seem­ing­ly "sex­u­al­ly un­con­ven­tion­al woman," the man­u­fac­tur­ing of a dra­ma of sex­u­al im­pro­pri­ety re­flect­ed a fo­cus on busi­ness bot­tom line, not pub­lic in­ter­est.

In the 15 years since then, dur­ing which nei­ther moth­er­hood nor my mar­riage have drawn any shock, I've watched me­dia head­lines shape pub­lic sen­ti­ment in ways that have less to do with pub­lic good than with sell­ing spe­cif­ic sto­ries and news­pa­pers.

"Have you had sex with her?", the head­line of Sheila Ram­per­sad's Ju­ly 2, 2015 Ex­press col­umn, was more of this strat­e­gy. This ques­tion was asked of a US politi­cian, but the ef­fect of the head­line, com­bined with the ar­ti­cle, was to make the pub­lic see the PM's "per­son­al dif­fi­cul­ties" and "aw­ful weak­ness" as sex-re­lat­ed, there­by steer­ing dis­cus­sion that since fol­lowed in­to self-right­eous gos­sip mas­querad­ing as po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary.

Ram­per­sad her­self asked a valid ques­tion: "what are ap­pro­pri­ate and eth­i­cal ways to in­ves­ti­gate, re­veal and dis­cuss the Prime Min­is­ter's al­leged per­son­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in so far as they af­fect the pub­lic in­ter­est?"

In­di­ra Sage­wan-Al­li re­spond­ed with a lec­ture about adul­tery, which as much as peo­ple think is wrong, has no clear con­nec­tion to good or bad gov­ern­men­tal de­ci­sion-mak­ing. Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att ar­gued that the state and pub­lic have no right in the bed­rooms of cit­i­zens.It was in­evitable that her ques­tion would be seen as ap­plic­a­ble to any­body in pub­lic life.

And, as if this Mad Hat­ter's tea par­ty didn't have enough crazy ta­ble talk, Sel­wyn Ryan re­turned on Sun­day to the for­mu­la­ic short­cut to scan­dal, the "sex­u­al­ly un­con­ven­tion­al woman," as a valid sub­ject for analy­sis in a col­umn on, wait for it, psy­cho­path­ic/so­cio­path­ic dis­or­ders and psy­chi­atric dis­ease.

We are fo­cus­ing on the pri­vate lives of lead­ers more than the out­rage that is the col­lapse of the eth­i­cal and in­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er of the state and its of­fi­cials to reign in all in­di­vid­u­als on our be­half. Per­sona mat­ters in the midst of their fail­ure, and is a sign of our turn­ing the page on our own re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as cit­i­zens and pow­er as vot­ers as we mine head­lines for a sav­iour.

Main­te­nance of pow­er through mass pa­tron-client re­la­tions, which have al­ways com­bined wel­fare with cor­rup­tion, added to the pow­er of fi­nanciers over po­lit­i­cal par­ties–from Jack to Ish and Steve to SIS, which has re­ceived more than one-tenth of our na­tion­al bud­get in con­tracts, added to poor in­sti­tu­tion­al reg­u­la­tion on every­thing from land de­vel­op­ment to en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment is the re­al bac­cha­nal.

It doesn't mat­ter who we put in of­fice, they have and will all over­see mas­sive waste and cor­rup­tion, re­gard­less of the par­ty lead­ers or oth­er can­di­dates, whether they drink al­co­hol, smoke weed or have un­con­ven­tion­al sex. And it will re­main so as long we feed the in­ter­est of big busi­ness, which owns the me­dia, by not fo­cus­ing on the sto­ry of every miss­ing dol­lar, then de­mand­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty from pub­lic de­ci­sions and deals. Ri­han­na's BBH­MM is my tax­pay­er's an­them. Not a vote for you un­less you get all our mon­ey back where it should be.

I care less about Kei­th or Kam­la's per­son­al­i­ty than the sick­ness of mis­spent bil­lions de­tailed in every year's Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port, which no leader on any plat­form talks about or takes re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for, which no au­thor­i­ty has ever is­sued a state­ment on, list­ing im­me­di­ate ac­tion be­ing tak­en, and which is the greater pri­vate sleaze threat­en­ing pub­lic or­der.

To this ex-Miss Mas­tana, that sto­ry is the re­al in­ter­ra­cial shock­er.