Yvonne Ba­boolal

So­cial ac­tivist, In­shan Ish­mael, who drew thou­sands to his Skin­ner Park ral­ly ear­li­er this month, says he is not work­ing un­der­cov­er for the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) nor does he want to form his own po­lit­i­cal par­ty. The 41-year-old Bam­boo busi­ness­man who sells for­eign-used ve­hi­cles, has all but left the COP, of which he was a mem­ber, and has formed the group, One Peo­ple, One Voice.

In 2007, he was ar­rest­ed for stag­ing a suc­cess­ful na­tion­al shut­down and charged for print­ing fliers with­out the print­er's name. For the past two months, Ish­mael and his group have been show­ing up at dif­fer­ent venues in silent protest. In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian on Fri­day, he in­sist­ed that it has noth­ing to do with pol­i­tics but with help­ing peo­ple.

Work for coun­try

"I have no po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tions," he said. "I have no fall­out with the COP but I have not been at­tend­ing meet­ings since the last gen­er­al elec­tion."

It's his sense of so­cial con­scious­ness, fired by his Is­lam­ic be­liefs, that is now the main dri­ving force in his life, he said. "I will no longer be in­volved in the busi­ness. To gain ma­te­r­i­al things is of no val­ue to me any­more. "My goal is to work for my coun­try and to spend as much time as I can with my three chil­dren, whom I love very much. "I don't want pop­u­lar­i­ty or fame. One Peo­ple, One Voice is a pres­sure group and will re­main one."

Ish­mael said the change in him came af­ter he start­ed his own tele­vi­sion sta­tion, Is­lam­ic Broad­cast­ing Net­work (IBN), and peo­ple in need start­ed com­ing to him for help. "Peo­ple came with hun­gry chil­dren, with sto­ries about hous­es falling down. "I re­mem­ber one hun­gry child grab­bing two hand­fuls of corn­flakes I gave him and stuff­ing it in­to his mouth." Is­lam­ic art­work adorn the walls of Ish­mael's of­fice and the Qu'ran and oth­er Mus­lim re­li­gious lit­er­a­ture cov­er the cen­tre ta­ble.

Ish­mael said he prays five times a day but is not a re­li­gious fa­nat­ic, point­ing out that he does not dress in Mus­lim garb. Re­call­ing the for­ma­tion of One Peo­ple, One Voice, he said two months ago he made a call on his tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ask­ing peo­ple con­cerned about is­sues in Trinidad and To­ba­go to come to the Bam­boo sta­tion. "About 60 or 70 peo­ple showed up, doc­tors, lawyers, sno-cone and dou­bles ven­dors, peo­ple from all walks of life.

"There are mem­bers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment in the group. Most of them, how­ev­er, are UNC." Ish­mael said his mo­tive be­hind the call was to bring all the protest­ing groups to­geth­er. As­sist­ing young chil­dren has been one of the group's ma­jor ac­tiv­i­ties since it start­ed, Ish­mael said. He said a protest out­side the Health Min­istry's Park Street of­fice earned them the ear of Health Min­is­ter Jer­ry Narace. "We want­ed his as­sis­tance to send four-year old Chrissie Bis­nath, who has a hole in her heart, to Cu­ba for surgery. He has promised to help and she should be leav­ing soon."

So what was One Peo­ple, One Voice do­ing at the swear­ing in of new Ch­agua­nas May­or, Natasha Navas, on Thurs­day morn­ing? "We were dis­gust­ed with the man­ner in which for­mer may­or, Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, was re­moved. IBN had al­so gone in search of Navas in Fe­lic­i­ty when we heard that she had been liv­ing there for two years. But we found out that the par­ents of her fi­anc� lived there and that she vis­its. There are so many more em­i­nent­ly qual­i­fied women in Ch­agua­nas who could have been may­or."

Files sent

More than three dozen mem­bers of One Peo­ple, One Voice, went and sat down on the side­walk not too far from the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion in silent protest, Ish­mael said. The group al­so staged a protest in front of the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence ear­li­er in the month, which re­sult­ed in Ish­mael's "files be­ing sent to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions." He said, "The po­lice had two charges against me, il­le­gal as­sem­bly and cre­at­ing a threat to the Prime Min­is­ter and his wife. "The DPP will de­ter­mine if these charges are to be laid. The po­lice has been mon­i­tor­ing Ish­mael's group like if it was a ter­ror­ist group, he claimed.

He said when they were leav­ing Narace's of­fice af­ter their meet­ing with him, two ri­ot po­lice of­fi­cers, in full gear, were wait­ing for them down­stairs. "When we pub­licly an­nounced that we were at­tend­ing the re­cent PNM ral­ly in Wood­ford Square, we got a death threat. "Some­one called me and said if we came there, we were dead. We as­sem­bled at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah that day and saw two un­der­cov­er of­fi­cers watch­ing us in a gold Almera." One Peo­ple, One Voice is plan­ning an­oth­er Skin­ner Park ral­ly for Au­gust.