Pao­lo Ker­na­han

If there is one thing Tri­nis love is to talk ad nau­se­am about is­sues which have been thor­ough­ly ven­ti­lat­ed in nu­mer­ous in­car­na­tions. We speak of them as if they had nev­er crossed any­one's lips. "Heng dem!" "Dem ban­dit doh kyear bout nobor­dy!" "Time to out dey light in Wood­ford Square. I go pay to watch dat!" It re­al­ly does not mat­ter how of­ten the com­plex­i­ties of the death penal­ty are ex­plained to the pub­lic. It is a pure­ly emo­tive re­sponse to the bru­tal­i­ty of our con­tem­po­rary rob­bers. Enough al­ready! It is much eas­i­er to chant this mor­bid re­frain, isn't it? Just try fire breath­ing the fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions with the same ven­om as the afore­men­tioned war­rior chant: "Fol­low you chil­dren to be sure that they are not get­ting in­volved with ne'er do wells or oth­er ne­far­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty char­ac­ters!" Or how about: "Let's stick to­geth­er as a com­mu­ni­ty! A co­he­sive neigh­bour­hood is anath­e­ma to vi­o­lent crim­i­nals!" Doesn't have quite the same im­pact, does it?

Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters were them­selves part of the back and forth on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, at least un­til the Prime Min­is­ter stepped in at the To­ba­go cab­i­net re­treat like a teacher re­turn­ing to a noisy class­room and pelt the chalk­board buster be­hind her charges. Her state­ment was tan­ta­mount to, "Every­one keeps de­bat­ing the death penal­ty, it is the law! So keep al­lyuh a-- kwart!" We treat our in­sti­tu­tions like sew­er­age treat­ment plants. We ex­pect the po­lice, pris­ons, teach­ers and so­cial work­ers to process the waste that we con­tin­ue to gen­er­ate in co­pi­ous amounts. Once we flush them down the sys­tem, we do not want to hear what hap­pens to them af­ter that. Well what do you sup­pose that kind of hands-off at­ti­tude yields? That's right, a pho­to­graph on the front page of the dai­ly news of a bliss­ful­ly un­aware man waist deep in a poop-shake gar­gling un­treat­ed ef­flu­ent at a mal­func­tion­ing waste wa­ter treat­ment plant at the Beetham. That same in­sti­tu­tion was at one time "flush" with $200 mil­lion to build the plant. As fa­mous rock and roll singer Chris Cor­nell once screamed, "Mon­ey can't give what the truth takes away."

We are still belly­ach­ing about the "as­tro­nom­i­cal" salaries be­ing paid to the for­eign-used Com­mis­sion­er and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

I must ad­mit though that the drop-jaw re­sponse to the fig­ures of $130,000 and $108,000 re­spec­tive­ly from Tri­nis whose salaries hov­er in the range of $5,000-$8,000 a month was quite rea­son­able. Let's get some per­spec­tive here though, peo­ple! TT$130,000 is a lit­tle high­er than US$20,000, which is what these men will have been paid in their pre­vi­ous posts. You must then add to that an in­duce­ment to come to our lit­tle Mo­gadishu in par­adise in the first place. What are you go­ing to do? Tell them go on­line and watch de gyuls and dem shakin' dey junk in town in dey Car­ni­val biki­ni suit? Send them a frozen shark and bake with the neat­ly pre-pack­aged heart-burn condi­ments? Pro­fes­sion­al callers-in to the talk shows ex­pound, "When de po-leece see dat big set ah mon­ey payin' out to for­eign­er, dey will lose dey mo­ti­va­tion!" I can­not imag­ine how much more mo­ti­va­tion they have left to lose giv­en the ban­dit-po­lice score­line. The next talk­ing point was in­creased salaries for po­lice of­fi­cers. You are not go­ing to get much ar­gu­ment from me on prop­er com­pen­sa­tion for po­lice of­fi­cers. One thing though: how much longer are we go­ing to prop up a sys­tem that hinges re­mu­ner­a­tion on the pas­sage of time as op­posed to the per­for­mance that we so des­per­ate­ly crave?

As de­bate plateaus, locked in dusty par­ti­san in­fused ban­ter, sud­den­ly it switch­es! With the re­call of a black-out drunk episode we sub in new chat­ter for the pre­vi­ous rau­cous de­bate as if there had nev­er been one at all! "I fine de in­de­pen­dence awards had too mucha...East In­di­an! (the callers pause be­fore 'East In­di­an' as if this shal­low vo­cal ges­ture mit­i­gates the ob­vi­ous­ly racist over­tones of the spleen-vent­ing) Be­hold! In­de­pen­dence awards are the next hob­by horse. "If you watch at de peo­ple who win all dem awards...and de In­di­an la­dy who sing de na­tion­al an­them there was hor­ri­ble!" I am not mak­ing this stuff up. For all the years pri­or, we had to hear re­peat­ed com­plaints about the gross racial im­bal­ance in the awardees, favour­ing "Africans" Now the pen­du­lum of per­cep­tion has swung too far in the oth­er di­rec­tion and "it have too much ah In­dyan!" Just on the face of it, the ar­gu­ment is pure rub­bish giv­en the di­ver­si­ty of the names of the re­ci- pients. What is in­cred­i­ble is that peo­ple do not see the clang­ing con­tra­dic­tions in their own di­a­tribe!

"This thing should be based on mer­it, not race! We see­ing too much ah one race in de ting man!" It is en­tire­ly con­ceiv­able that, on mer­it alone, you could have on­ly one race at any giv­en time rep­re­sent­ed!

The Gov­ern­ment, in its ea­ger­ness to right per­ceived wrongs of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, gave out so many awards, I felt that my in­vi­ta­tion some­how got lost in the mail. It was ob­vi­ous that there was some at­tempt to dis­play racial di­ver­si­ty in the awards, when one's con­tri­bu­tion to so­ci­ety in a par­tic­u­lar sphere should be the sole de­ter­min­ing cri­te­ri­on. We have been grum­bling about race quo­tas in pub­lic life for so long that stud­ies on these com­plaints have been com­mis­sioned. The PNM was ac­cused of not hav­ing enough In­di­ans in the Cab­i­net. Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid, Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo , Lenny Saith, Chris­tine Sa­hadeo, Ger­ry Narace, they were all hon­orary blacks I guess. By virtue of their af­fil­i­a­tion with the PNM they doh count be­cause de PNM is ah black par­ty.

Now the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship is be­ing ac­cused of the same thing from the oth­er end of the spec­trum. So Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis, Her­bert Vol­ney, John Sandy, Jack Warn­er, Anil Roberts, they are all un­der­lings in the new gov­ern­ment? (Well Anil, you are kin­da like me, one foot in de roti shop and de next in de Break­fast Shed, so you were re­al­ly a lagniappe; take it or leave it.) "Kam­la spen we mon­ey to live it up in New York!" "Why Row­ley doh hush and study he own pat­ty be­fore he look to bad talk de PP!" "Jack on­ly want to run every­bor­dy min­istry. Wham! Kyam­la eh have no mout?!" Some­times di­gest­ing the con­stant chat­ter of the day-to-day in Trinidad is like be­ing in­side the mind of a schiz­o­phrenic. What wor­ries me is that the lev­el of dis­course im­proves by on­ly the most mod­est of in­cre­ments. While pub­lic dis­course is healthy, some talk is just cathar­sis for peo­ple who feel hard done by in the re­cent po­lit­i­cal mega-thrust event. For oth­ers, it is a dan­ger­ous in­cite­ment of ten­sions that needn't be there.