David E Bratt MD

?Over­heard in the Four Roads Hi-Lo su­per­mar­ket last week: "Boy, yuh make up yuh mind yet? Make sure yuh vote for we or dey go send we back to Africa."

The speak­er was an el­der­ly pen­sion­er talk­ing to an­oth­er.

This elec­tion was al­ways about race. Even if sci­en­tists say there is no such thing, anec­dotes trump re­search any time. I had in­tend­ed to re­peat the litany of woes about the present Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion: lack of gov­er­nance; the hun­dreds of mil­lions wast­ed on grand-charg­ing at sum­mits; emp­ty sky­scrap­ers; kid­nap­pings which the Gov­ern­ment thinks is a joke; The fail­ure to stop the 3,000 mur­ders and the un­spo­ken fear that the rul­ing par­ty was part of it through its deal­ings with "com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers;" Cepep; Ude­cott and the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry; Calder Hart and his un­be­liev­able close­ness to the Prime Min­is­ter; per­jury al­le­ga­tions that have gone nowhere; Row­ley's ac­cu­sa­tions and flip flop;

Po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence with the ap­point­ments of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion; the il­le­gal coat-of-arms on the PM's car; the con­di­tion of Pres­i­dent's House; the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion de­ba­cles; the in­de­cent de­pen­den­cy on for­eign con­sul­tants and Chi­nese work­ers; can­dalous pro­cure­ment process­es; The hasty at­tempts to ar­rest a Chief Jus­tice on a Fri­day af­ter­noon; dis­crim­i­na­tion against the Ma­ha Sab­ha in grant­i­ng a FM ra­dio broad­cast­ing li­cence; the emas­cu­la­tion of the EMA; the il­le­gal ral­ly in Wood­ford Square un­der po­lice pro­tec­tion whilst a mo­tion against the Gov­ern­ment was be­ing de­bat­ed across the street; the $2 mil­lion flag; the aban­doned hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres; The 30 per cent SEA fail­ures year af­ter year with no one know­ing why; the lack of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my whilst invit­ing for­eign com­pa­nies to ex­ploit gas and oil un­der con­di­tions un­known to most of the pop­u­la­tion; the squan­der­ing of oil and gas mon­ey for a sec­ond time, $300 bil­lion gone; the deal with Abu Bakr pri­or to the 2002 elec­tion, as out­lined by the Privy Coun­cil;

The in­ef­fi­cient Li­cens­ing Of­fices, Dis­trict Rev­enue Of­fices, courts, Pass­port Of­fice and min­istries; the traf­fic; the enor­mi­ty of cor­rup­tion with­in the state-owned spe­cial pur­pose en­ti­ties; the Tarou­ba sta­di­um; the schol­ar­ship scan­dal in­volv­ing the Min­istry of Cul­ture; NA­PA; the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal; the state-of-the-art radar that does not work; the three blimps; the fast-speed radar boats and the at­tack he­li­copters; the de­struc­tion of the Grand Stand and a large part of the Sa­van­nah; The crip­pling of the ca­lyp­so tents; the ICC Crick­et World Cup "brown bag" fi­as­co; the de­sali­na­tion plants; the won­der­ful smelters; the berm at Beetham; a Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and au­thor of a book on ethics who did not un­der­stand the mean­ing of "fixed de­posit;" Cli­co; The prop­er­ty tax; the "palace;" the bac­cha­nal sur­round­ing the Gua­napo church and the threats to re­porters in­ves­ti­gat­ing it; the bla­tant at­tempts to give the Gov­ern­ment con­trol over the ju­di­cia­ry as out­lined by the present Chief Jus­tice; The con­sti­tu­tion­al draft, writ­ten by un­knowns, that would make the PM an "ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent" with con­trol over every­thing, a la Burn­ham; the in­com- pre­hen­si­ble se­cu­ri­ty de­tails and blar­ing sirens that we have had to tol­er­ate in an is­land the size of a large Amer­i­can city; the sur­prise vis­it to the ra­dio sta­tion; the in­sult­ing en­trance in­to Mr Vil­lafana's prop­er­ty; the prophet­ess and the in­tru­sion of re­li­gion in­to what is sup­posed to be a sec­u­lar state.

Above all, the "gimme gimme de­pen­den­cy syn­drome" the PNM has en­cour­aged amongst its sup­port­ers and the pan­der­ing to the low­est com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor, ie, race.�Race equals group prej­u­dice equals group pol­i­tics in T&T.

This sense of group func­tions along two im­por­tant lev­els. One lev­el in­volves the ob­vi­ous di­men­sion of dom­i­na­tion, of hi­er­ar­chi­cal or­der­ing and po­si­tion­ing as typ­i­fied by the po­lit­i­cal cry: "Trinidad is PNM coun­try." A sec­ond crit­i­cal lev­el, how­ev­er, in­volves a di­men­sion of ex­clu­sion and in­clu­sion, of so­cio-emo­tion­al em­brace and re­jec­tion. "We cul­ture." This ex­clu­sion and in­clu­sion di­men­sion, again, in­vokes an emo­tion­al ba­sis to the sense of group. Lis­ten to the ra­dio talk shows and hear the var­i­ous tribes talk about "those peo­ple!" Race prej­u­dice is a pro­tec­tive de­vice. It func­tions, how­ev­er short­sight­ed­ly, to pre­serve the in­tegri­ty and the po­si­tion of the dom­i­nant group, even if there is cor­rup­tion, in­com­pe­tence and lack of in­tegri­ty.

It is race that is be­hind the commess that is go­ing on in T&T, the tac­it un­der­stand­ing that it is all go­b­ar but that it is our go­b­ar so it is all right. The right­eous con­cerns with­in the PNM ap­par­ent­ly have giv­en in. That must change. Pol­i­tics in T&T is a pol­i­tics wait­ing to be bro­ken. Un­til we recog­nise this, un­til we move away from race as the defin­ing fea­ture of our pol­i­tics, we will strug­gle. The is­land is too small. From my read­ing of the is­sues, it is the present PNM par­ty, mold­ed in the im­age of one man, that is hold­ing most to race. They have failed us. It is the coali­tion of par­ties that of­fers the best hope of es­cape from the pol­i­tics of race. They may fail again but there is no al­ter­na­tive. I will sup­port the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion next Mon­day.