Yvonne Ba­boolal

Raf­fique Shah, 1970s army mu­ti­neer, is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to apol­o­gise for say­ing he doesn't know from where the UNC "dredged" up Makan­dal Daa­ga, leader of the NJAC. "It's a dis­re­spect­ful and deroga­to­ry state­ment and a bad ex­am­ple for our chil­dren. Daa­ga is a hero in our coun­try," Shah said. "Daa­ga has made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion. That's why Man­ning and oth­ers with him can be where they are to­day." Shah, who met Daa­ga dur­ing one of his two six-month stints in prison for acts dur­ing the Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion, re­called: "We nev­er had a close as­so­ci­a­ton. "I was part of the army mutiny in 1970 and he was on the streets. "1970 trig­gered mass so­cial and eco­nom­ic changes in the coun­try."

"Even Dr Er­ic Williams, in the wake of 1970, ac­tu­al­ly agreed with the num­ber of is­sues raised dur­ing the Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion. "He recog­nised that what they were cry­ing out for was le­git­i­mate. "Blacks and In­di­ans were com­ing out of school with O-Lev­els and couldn't get work. "Un­em­ploy­ment was 25 per cent. Youth un­em­ploy­ment was 40 per cent. Af­ter 1970, doors were opened." Shah said the Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion was a glob­al move­ment and was in­flu­enced by what was hap­pen­ing in Amer­i­ca where Trinida­di­an, Stoke­ly Carmichael, was at the fore­front of the strug­gle af­ter the as­sas­si­na­tion of Dr Mar­tin Luther King.

To il­lus­trate the ex­tent to which Daa­ga wield­ed in­flu­ence among the peo­ple at the time, Shah re­called the fu­ner­al of Basil Davis, who was killed by the po­lice dur­ing the rev­o­lu­tion, at the San Juan ceme­tery on April 9, 1970. "There was a re­port­ed 50,000 peo­ple at that fu­ner­al. The fu­ner­al was in San Juan but peo­ple were still in Barataria. "Man­ning has nev­er done any­thing like this in his whole life. Daa­ga earned his fame." Shah be­lieves, how­ev­er, that Daa­ga may have some prob­lems rekin­dling that spir­it of 1970 be­cause of the men­tal state of the na­tion. "I think the Op­po­si­tion is prob­a­bly hop­ing he can rekin­dle that spir­it of strug­gle among young, Black peo­ple in the East/West Cor­ri­dor and lift them out of that neg­a­tive ap­proach to life. "But every­body has gone so ma­te­ri­al­is­tic."

What they say

The pres­ence of Daa­ga on the UNC plat­form will strength­en the coali­tion's show of uni­ty, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist, Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says. "They are try­ing to sug­gest that they are bring­ing all the crit­i­cal an­ti-PNM groups in T&T to­geth­er. "The coali­tion is sup­posed to unite the coun­try in the flavour of the one love of 1986, all races in one." Ra­goonath said NJAC was be­ing brought back, not as a par­ty as such. "It could best be de­scribed as a pres­sure group. The NJAC of to­day is not the NJAC of the 1970s, which pro­mot­ed African/In­di­an uni­ty."

"Post-1970, NJAC turned out to be an Afro-cen­tric par­ty rather than a mass-based or­gan­i­sa­tion. "And when the par­ty comes to­geth­er with the ma­jor­i­ty In­do-based UNC, it presents a show of uni­ty with the races," Ra­goonath said. Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist, In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, thinks Daa­ga has "con­sid­er­able sym­bol­ic val­ue" on an Op­po­si­tion plat­form. "Part of the rea­son for the coali­tion is to draw var­i­ous seg­ments of the so­ci­ety to­geth­er, to break down the eth­nic di­vide. "Daa­ga is a bid (by the Op­po­si­tion) to court the Afro-Tri­ni vote while break­ing down the di­vide be­tween In­di­ans and Africans, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the mar­gin­al seats of Tu­na­puna and San Fer­nan­do West.

Ram­per­sad be­lieves that, giv­en the his­tor­i­cal role Daa­ga played in at­tempt­ing to uni­fy the races in the 1970s, he will touch a lot of peo­ple on the elec­tion plat­form.