Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

Is a cry­ing shame that Patrick Man­ning pit­ting Pen­ny Beck­les against Lau­rel Leza­ma in the fight for the PNM Ari­ma can­di­da­cy. What we need is more women in gov­ern­ment, not a bat­tle be­tween two women for one safe seat. Pen­ny have re­al cred­i­bil­i­ty, not just in the PNM and Ari­ma, in par­tic­u­lar, but na­tion­al­ly and in the women's move­ment here. I don't know if she does call she­self a fem­i­nist, but she does get props from the move­ment for she in­tegri­ty and back­bone.

Lau­rel Leza­ma ent no John­ny-come-late­ly she­self–is years she in PNM with the Youth League. She must be had she eye on that prize for a long time now and now that the can­di­da­cy in sight it must be burn­ing that she have to fight up with Pen­ny for it.

This choice rais­ing a in­ter­est­ing jep nest, though. Look­ing at the two can­di­dates, as a fel­la I know say, it strik­ing how it come down to a choice be­tween a younger, light-skin, long-hair woman, and a old­er, dark-skin, short-hair one. Lau­rel might not know it but it have all kind of un­der­cur­rent pulling there with race and class, ageism and gen­der. Plen­ty Di­as­po­ra so­ci­eties have the same con­struc­tion of fem­i­nin­i­ty in African-her­itage peo­ple. The light-skin woman come with a ex­pec­ta­tion of high­er class, and of be­ing more re­fine than the dark one. When it come to African-Trinida­di­an women, in a kind of way the old say­ing still true: "If you white, you right. If you brown, stick around. If you black, step back." You could see it in the ad­ver­tis­ing in­dus­try, where light-skin mod­els for years had a stran­gle­hold on the big cam­paigns. (My ex-hus­band, who work in ad­ver­tis­ing from the time he was 18 or 19, used to call that par­tic­u­lar com­plex­ion "Can­nings brown.")

A light-skin woman with long, curly hair and light eyes is prac­ti­cal­ly the tri­fec­ta. It still have a lurk­ing in­ter­nalised racism run­ning in plen­ty of we and plen­ty of we sys­tems, where we give a sub­tle push to the light child in­stead of the dark one.

I not ac­cus­ing the PNM screen­ing com­mit­tee of be­ing racist. For all I know, Patrick Man­ning push­ing Lau­rel over Pen­ny might not have noth­ing to do with race and colour and thing. Man­ning might just want to get rid of Pen­ny be­cause she put Mrs Man­ning in she place in pub­lic, and have the au­dac­i­ty to sug­gest that gov­ern­ment plans for de­vel­op­ment in Ari­ma might be awry. Or he might just dis­like Pen­ny pop­u­lar­i­ty. She not try­ing to be the bo' rat but Pen­ny could eas­i­ly get plen­ty sup­port if she make a run for lead­er­ship. No won­der he try to palm she off with a diplo­mat­ic po­si­tion some­where away.

Lau­rel, on the oth­er hand, play­ing right in­to the stereo­type of the fem­i­nine, girl-girl woman, at least in she looks. She young, too, and for a cer­tain kind of man it easy to imag­ine that kind of woman more mal­leable than oth­ers. Young girly-girl women, they might be think­ing, easy to ma­nip­u­late. Lau­rel is a sea­son politi­cian so I doubt she so easy as all that to mould, but I just pass­ing com­ment on the so­ci­ety, not on Lau­rel in par­tic­u­lar. It have a cer­tain kind of male fan­ta­sy about the docile, sex­u­al­ly avail­able fe­male–a kind of pet, re­al­ly–that a young woman could fall in­to. I just talk­ing about ap­pear­ances and the prej­u­dices that we does cart around with we every day. I not say­ing they true, just that they out there.

I wait­ing to find out what hap­pen up in Ari­ma. Ei­ther which way, I hope the PNM find some good po­si­tion to put Pen­ny and Lau­rel in, be­cause you mustn't keep good woman down. On an­oth­er, re­lat­ed note, I want to go back to what I write about last week­end. I say "Don't vote," mean­ing the op­po­site, of course. I thought it was clear that the col­umn was iron­ic, but I get at least one e-mail from a read­er who thought is don't vote I re­al­ly mean don't vote.

Just to make it crys­tal clear: I want every­body who el­i­gi­ble to vote to run, don't walk, to­mor­row if they could go, and reg­is­ter. You have till Tues­day. Who el­i­gi­ble to vote? The gov­ern­ment Web site TTCon­nect.gov.tt say:

�2 A cit­i­zen of T&T who is 18 years of age or old­er and has resided in an elec­toral dis­trict/ con­stituen­cy for at least two months pri­or to the qual­i­fy­ing date (in this case, say May 24).

�2 A Com­mon­wealth cit­i­zen, 18 years of age or old­er, who has resided legal­ly in T&T for a pe­ri­od of at least one year and has resided in an elec­toral dis­trict/con­stituen­cy for a least two months pri­or to the qual­i­fy­ing date.

�2 A non-Com­mon­wealth cit­i­zen, 18 years of age or old­er, who has resided legal­ly in T&T for a pe­ri­od of at least five years and has resided in an elec­toral dis­trict/ con­stituen­cy for a least two months pri­or to the qual­i­fy­ing date.

Those of al­lyuh who al­ready reg­is­ter, and who have no con­sci­en­tious ob­jec­tion to vot­ing in na­tion­al elec­tions, please, I beg­ging, go and vote. I know it have peo­ple who take a stand and in­sist they have the right not to vote. For all the rea­sons I say in my col­umn last week–for ex­am­ple, how gov­ern­ment and par­ty seem to be the same thing, and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy don't work so good here–it have peo­ple who find vot­ing is a waste of time. Them so, well that is their right not to vote. Is not that they have some stu­pid, ir­rel­e­vant, friv­o­lous rea­son for them not vot­ing. Is not idle­ness. But for me, too much of peo­ple fight for uni­ver­sal suf­frage for we to just piss it away by not vot­ing. Imag­ine, less than 100 years ago you had to have prop­er­ty, and a man had to be over 21 to vote. Worse yet for women: they had to be over 30. Say what you want but when you choose not to vote you in­sult­ing the peo­ple who would have want to vote back then, but couldn't. Worse yet if you don't make a choice but on­ly not vot­ing be­cause you lazy or un­in­ter­est­ed.