To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Dr Tim Gopeesingh prob­a­bly had good rea­son to be up­set on Fri­day, but his choice of words ran so far ahead of his ac­tu­al ac­cu­sa­tions, that Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Colm Im­bert and Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning im­me­di­ate­ly raised their own voic­es in alarm.

It shouldn't be sur­pris­ing that a politi­cian would use strong lan­guage to make a point close not just to his heart, but al­so his busi­ness, but the Ca­roni East MP's use of the term "eth­nic cleans­ing" is not just in­ac­cu­rate; it's vir­u­lent­ly provoca­tive. Let's cor­rect that in­ac­cu­rate and in­flam­ma­to­ry term right now. The sit­u­a­tion that Dr Gopeesingh was hop­ing to bring to pub­lic at­ten­tion, through his un­for­tu­nate re­marks, is nor­mal­ly de­scribed as dis­crim­i­na­tion, a rep­re­hen­si­ble enough term for the prac­tice of pref­er­en­tial treat­ment of em­ploy­ees on the ba­sis of race.

The term "eth­nic cleans­ing" first came to pub­lic promi­nence in Yu­goslavia, to de­scribe the scale of the geno­cide and forced mi­gra­tions that en­sued in the Ser­bian-Croat con­flicts of the 1990s. Such a char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion is not just an in­ac­cu­rate way of de­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion that the good doc­tor be­lieves to ex­ist at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal; it is al­so adamant­ly sen­sa­tion­al­ist. Far from dri­ving home his point or pro­vok­ing ac­tion, Gopeesingh's over­wrought ef­fort to deal with the per­cep­tion of dis­crim­i­na­tion has be­come its own source of scan­dal and con­dem­na­tion, hard­ly a pro­duc­tive way of pur­su­ing his mis­sion.

To be sure, Gopeesingh has raised a crit­i­cal is­sue that's wor­thy of in­ves­ti­ga­tion and re­view, but this hard­ly seems to be the most ef­fec­tive way of deal­ing with the prob­lem. At a press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day, the MP of­fered a list of doc­tors that he de­scribed as be­ing sub­ject to the dis­crim­i­na­tion he al­lud­ed to in his state­ment to Par­lia­ment. Of the 13 doc­tors he named as be­ing vic­tims of what he de­scribed as "bla­tant in­tim­i­da­tion and on­go­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion by the Gov­ern­ment," three are not of In­di­an de­scent.

That's hard­ly rea­son to dis­count his ac­cu­sa­tions, but by choos­ing to pur­sue the mat­ter with in­tem­per­ate haste, in­stead of the wise, mea­sured pace of a par­lia­men­tary pro­fes­sion­al and se­nior doc­tor, Gopeesingh may well have ru­ined an op­por­tu­ni­ty to put a rea­soned case be­fore the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Where, ex­cept for his par­ty col­league Fuad Khan, are the doc­tors will­ing to cite in­ci­dents and ex­am­ples of the kind of dis­crim­i­na­tion that's worth in­ves­ti­gat­ing? Dr Gopeesingh is cor­rect to note that his state­ments, if they can be sub­stan­ti­at­ed and cor­rob­o­rat­ed, are "wor­thy of na­tion­al at­ten­tion and par­lia­men­tary de­bate."

By Sat­ur­day's press con­fer­ence, Gopeesingh was tidy­ing the terms of his ac­cu­sa­tion, not­ing that the is­sue might not have been based as much on racial pro­files as it is on the pos­si­ble "tar­get­ing" of a group of pro­fes­sion­als per­ceived to be an­ti-PNM. So which is it, Dr Gopeesingh? Is it a mat­ter of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion or per­ceived pay­back for doc­tors un­will­ing to toe a PNM line? At the press con­fer­ence, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment ad­mit­ted how hard it was for him to vent this is­sue.

Dr Gopeesingh should be aware of how hard it was for the pub­lic to sup on the bit­ter fare he pro­vid­ed on Fri­day, care­less re­marks sea­soned with in­ad­e­quate ref­er­ence and ci­ta­tions. The po­lit­i­cal con­sumer de­serves more than half-baked ac­cu­sa­tions poor­ly pre­pared and taste­less­ly served. Dr Gopeesingh needs to take this messy plat­ter back to the back­burn­ers of the UNC kitchens, and bring it back to the ta­ble when it is thor­ough­ly-cooked and ready for pub­lic con­sump­tion.