To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Should Yasin Abu Bakr, spir­i­tu­al leader of the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen, an­nounce his can­di­da­cy as an al­ter­na­tive for gov­ern­ment lead­er­ship this week, Trinidad and To­ba­go will hit a new bench­mark in re­spect­ing the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process and ho­n­our­ing the rule of law. Abu Bakr has an­nounced that he will re­launch his po­lit­i­cal par­ty, the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion, on Wednes­day, claim­ing that peo­ple have been "blind­ed" by the Gov­ern­ment's 2020 vi­sion. Should Abu Bakr choose to set aside his role as imam for a new man­tle of po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship, he will have pub­licly ac­knowl­edged the as­pi­ra­tions that his shad­ow roles in the elec­tion process over the last decade have strong­ly sug­gest­ed.

Since Abu Bakr led an in­sur­rec­tion against the elect­ed gov­ern­ment of this coun­try in Ju­ly, 1990, his or­gan­i­sa­tion has de­clared it­self aligned with and sup­port­ive of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in the cam­paign for the 1995 gen­er­al elec­tion and the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment in sub­se­quent elec­tions. The plat­form for the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion par­ty, ac­cord­ing to Bakr, is crime and cor­rup­tion, mat­ters to which the Mus­lim leader and his ja­maat have been linked over the two decades since the failed coup at­tempt. First, the freed rebels cast them­selves as vig­i­lantes, claim­ing do­min­ion over the dark­er cor­ners of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty left un­ad­dressed by the po­lice, and then they be­gan to ap­pear as sus­pects in a num­ber of crim­i­nal cas­es be­fore the courts.

De­spite his open com­mit­ment to Is­lam­ic mil­i­tan­cy, Yasin Abu Bakr has been the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go's com­mit­ment to an un­bi­ased read­ing of the laws of the land and a com­mit­ment to the very democ­ra­cy that, in 1990, he sought to over­throw. When the armed mem­bers of the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen sur­ren­dered af­ter the col­lapse of the 1990 in­sur­rec­tion, they were ar­rest­ed and brought be­fore the courts. The rebel group ar­gued that they had been grant­ed a bind­ing amnesty by the act­ing Pres­i­dent of the day. The Mus­limeen won that ar­gu­ment and were freed, lib­er­at­ed by the very laws they ig­nored and sought to abol­ish when they at­tacked and seized con­trol of Par­lia­ment and Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion, the sole tele­vi­sion broad­cast­er of the day.

As Yasin Abu Bakr plans an­oth­er, though em­i­nent­ly le­gal at­tempt to take pow­er in Trinidad and To­ba­go, there re­main trou­bling ques­tions about his re­la­tion­ships, both high, with lead­ing politi­cians, and low, which have brought him and his flock be­fore the courts to an­swer charges of crim­i­nal con­duct. The lin­ger­ing ac­cu­sa­tions made by Abu Bakr in an af­fi­davit re­viewed by the Privy Coun­cil re­main be­fore the po­lice for in­ves­ti­ga­tion on the ad­vice of Jus­tice Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine, and those ques­tions are still to be sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly an­swered or re­fut­ed. That is­sue re­turned to a pub­lic fo­rum last week, when Ian Al­leyne in­ter­viewed the Mus­limeen leader on Thurs­day's Crime Watch pro­gramme on WinTV.

Al­leyne re­ceived an unedit­ed tape and doc­u­ments from Bakr on the show, and was sub­se­quent­ly ques­tioned by the po­lice about the mat­ter. Pol­i­tics is not the on­ly realm of Abu Bakr's pub­lic in­flu­ence. Some of his pub­lic speech­es have sug­gest­ed that while his views of Afro-cen­tric Is­lam­ic mil­i­tan­cy may have be­come less phys­i­cal, they re­main stri­dent and in­ward-look­ing. His threat to de­clare war against Mus­lims who failed to pay za­kaat re­main a low point in his re­la­tions with the tight­ly-knit Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Should Yasin Abu Bakr choose to pro­ceed with his plan to de­clare his can­di­da­cy for elec­tion, he will need to do a much bet­ter job of pre­sent­ing his po­si­tions and pri­or po­lit­i­cal in­volve­ment to vot­ers.

The Mus­limeen leader re­mains in­flu­en­tial with dis­en­fran­chised young peo­ple, and that ca­pac­i­ty to lead im­pres­sion­able minds unim­pressed with tra­di­tion­al po­lit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tions can­not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. The Bakr modus operan­di has, thus far, been lim­it­ed to veiled threats and scur­rilous in­nu­en­do, but that won't take him any dis­tance in an elec­tion race so fo­cused on hot but­ton is­sues, of which he may be con­sid­ered one. A Yasin Abu Bakr, who hopes to face the elec­torate, must come clean with vot­ers, pre­sent­ing ev­i­dence to back up all of his rob­ber talk and pro­duc­ing a man­i­festo com­posed of more that can be de­scribed as be­ing valu­able to Trinidad and To­ba­go than he has been will­ing to of­fer so far.