Prakash Per­sad

Con­sti­tu­tion­al change is, os­ten­si­bly, be­ing "de­bat­ed" in the is­lands of T&T. Cer­e­mo­ni­al pres­i­dent ver­sus ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent, first past the post ver­sus pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion and var­i­ous oth­er is­sues are be­ing con­sid­ered, all with the aim of find­ing the form of gov­ern­ment suit­able for us. The odd thing is that, to date, no­body has char­ac­terised "us." Lest the point is triv­i­alised, it should be point­ed out that a na­tion is usu­al­ly de­fined as "a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple of main­ly com­mon de­scent, his­to­ry, lan­guage and cul­ture in­hab­it­ing a ter­ri­to­ry." Im­plic­it in the de­f­i­n­i­tion is the con­cept of ho­mo­gene­ity.

The ra­tio­nale for the de­f­i­n­i­tion was prob­a­bly in­flu­enced by the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the ma­ture Eu­ro­pean na­tions where coun­try, state and na­tion were, in ef­fect, syn­onyms. For new­ly formed im­mi­grant-based, self-gov­ern­ing is­land land mass­es like T&T, the ap­pli­ca­tion of the ti­tle "na­tion" prob­a­bly needs a bit more cau­tion for, from a per­spec­tive of his­to­ry, we have just set foot on the jour­ney to na­tion­hood. The peo­ple of T&T are de­scend­ed from a va­ri­ety of eth­nic and cul­tur­al streams and hence a com­mu­ni­ty of com­mu­ni­ties would be a more ap­pro­pri­ate la­bel. In this type of sce­nario, het­ero­gene­ity is a dom­i­nant char­ac­ter­is­tic as op­posed to ho­mo­gene­ity.

In fact, many pre­vi­ous­ly ho­mo­ge­neous so­ci­eties are fast be­com­ing het­ero­ge­neous ones and sim­i­lar de­bates are en­gag­ing those so­ci­eties. A good ex­am­ple is that of the place of Lati­no cul­ture in the An­glo-de­rived cul­ture of the USA. The gov­er­nance of this coun­try moved from the British to a par­ty that, in the main, adopt­ed the colo­nial cul­ture and mores, a per­tur­ba­tion from Eu­ro­pean to Cre­ole. The fact that the ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple of Asian de­scent were liv­ing in the rur­al ar­eas in the "self-suf­fi­cient" mode meant that their cul­tur­al stream ran in a non-dis­turb­ing par­al­lel fash­ion to the "na­tion­al" one. The coun­try's ex­ter­nal im­age, which had and has a re­in­forc­ing ef­fect on the in­ter­nal im­age, was over­whelm­ing­ly that of a Cre­ole so­ci­ety.

This an­tecedent per­sists up to to­day. The open­ing up of elec­tron­ic me­dia, the rise of Chi­na and In­dia and the eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal suc­cess of im­mi­grants from the Mid­dle East have re­sult­ed in some de­gree of cul­tur­al as­ser­tion of the hith­er­to hid­den cul­tures on the na­tion­al stage. The sto­ry line though re­mains one of a dom­i­nant Cre­ole cul­ture. The ex­pres­sion of anger and frus­tra­tion fol­low­ing the cul­tur­al pro­gramme pre­sent­ed dur­ing the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as is symp­to­matic of the phe­nom­e­non. There seems to be an of­fi­cial pol­i­cy that de­fines Tri­ni cul­ture, in­clu­sive of all its East­ern (far and mid­dle) el­e­ments as Cre­ole. This is cul­tur­al hege­mo­ny at its worst for it is hyp­o­crit­i­cal and in­tol­er­ant of di­ver­si­ty, be­sides dis­fig­ur­ing his­to­ry.

The evo­lu­tion of a na­tion­al cul­ture would be great­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the adop­tion of a co­her­ent pol­i­cy frame­work. De­spite con­tin­u­ous com­plaints and protests, no re­al move­ment has been made in this di­rec­tion. The cul­ture of a na­tion plays a cru­cial role in de­vel­op­ing the ideals and as­pi­ra­tions of na­tion­hood. This is pos­i­tive­ly as­sert­ed in the na­tion­al an­them and it would be fair to say that de­spite the aber­ra­tions that oc­ca­sion­al­ly crop up, there has been steady progress in the vis­i­bil­i­ty of all the pre­vi­ous­ly hid­den cul­tures. The adop­tion of a frame­work that en­ables all the con­stituent cul­tures to be and seen to be treat­ed equal­ly would go a long way in cul­ti­vat­ing a sense of na­tion­hood.

It is worth in­di­cat­ing that what makes the rain­bow beau­ti­ful is the fact that the dif­fer­ent colours, side by side, are equal­ly vis­i­ble. If one colour was su­per­im­posed on an­oth­er, the rain­bow would lose its beau­ty and unique­ness. Nascent, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and plur­al na­tions would be well served by choos­ing a sys­tem of gov­er­nance that does not high­light or ex­ac­er­bate the dif­fer­ences of the con­stituent com­mu­ni­ties but rather pro­motes and strength­ens the com­mon­al­i­ties that ex­ist, in ef­fect strength­en­ing the no­tions of na­tion­hood.

Judg­ing by the vol­ume of com­plaints, the present sys­tem is not quite suit­ed for our sit­u­a­tion.

Change should be made and soon­er rather than lat­er but it must be pre­ced­ed by ad­e­quate dis­cus­sions among the cit­i­zen­ry. Through these dis­cus­sions will emerge the im­age of who we re­al­ly are, the over­ar­ch­ing na­tion­al char­ac­ter­is­tics that are the bases of our com­mon­al­i­ties which are more dom­i­nant and wed us to the shared ideals of many com­mu­ni­ties work­ing as one in the shad­ow of the na­tion­al flag. If we know our­selves, then sure­ly the task of gov­ern­ing our­selves be­comes a lot eas­i­er.

Prakash Per­sad is the di­rec­tor of Swa­ha Inc