?With gracious majesty, Queen Elizabeth II made an offer to a country whose proud posture last week looked like that of one needing neither help nor advice, but only "investment" from the rest of the world. "My government remains ready to assist in the security sector," the UK sovereign said, in an address to the state dinner at President's House.�The offer, who was making it, and where it was being made, all resonated inside the ramshackle state that is Trinidad and Tobago, now allegedly going through the motions of renovating itself through constitutional reform–if not yet renovating its crumbling President's House.�Her Majesty was, for T&T'S purposes, role-modelling a durably-functional ceremonial, head of state. It's happened even as an executive, non-ceremonial, presidency is being promoted in the local market place of political and constitutional ideas.�
Short hours before, she had arrived, pointedly by commercial airline (no executive jet for true blue-blood royalty), and appeared almost immediately to get to work. In a country where, at levels high and low, from ignorance and indifference, the standard of what's called the Queen's English is in free-fall decline, Elizabeth II fell at once to demonstrating what it means to be queen.�The T&T usage of queen has been variously qualified by, among others, "beauty," "Best Village," "parang," and "Carnival," from none of which flow prescriptions for duties, or expectations of behaviour. As to the manner born, literally, the first royal act in Port-of-Spain of Queen Elizabeth II was to fulfill the diplomatic and historical purpose of paying homage to those T&T nationals who had died in the service of the British sovereign and empire in 19th and 20th century wars.�
The ancient institution that Elizabeth II represents obviously has little in common with anything in T&T, or even elsewhere in the world.�Last February, when T&T received other European royalty in the persons of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, the monarch promised "every possible support to promote the teaching of Spanish." Elizabeth II is, no doubt, observant about the condition of the English language, as used in T&T. She will have been briefed to the effect that the need felt much greater here than language instruction is that for "security." On the day that she arrived, newspaper ads for BPTT, the leading British energy company here (with some 30 per cent Spanish equity holding), measuredly reminded everyone that it contributes 25 per cent of national income.
A sober backward glance would surely remind us that the British contribution to T&T security is no less worthy of celebratory mention.�British colonial authority left behind a Police Force indisputably superior in training, readiness, effectiveness, professionalism and probity to the Police Service of T&T today.�At various times of greatest need, T&T has resorted to advice and assistance from British sources. The Darby and O'Dowd inquiries between the 1960s and the 1990s represented the application of British expertise to policing problems found locally unsolvable.�In the 1990s and again today, the recruitment of serving and former Scotland Yard officers has highlighted continuing reliance on the UK for security by T&T, and also by other Caribbean states.�
Wearing an evening gown imprinted with the double chaconia, the national flower (design inspiration for the Performing Arts Academy), the Queen, by appearance and from soundbite, confirmed that she and her government know the right notes to play before an official T&T audience. For manufactured goods, including Carnival costumes, and for prestige construction, the understanding is now axiomatic that T&T turns to China, deep-pocketed bankroller to the world. It's in British shipyards, however, that the offshore patrol vessels, coastal protection "assets" long-advertised by the Manning administration, are finally being fitted out for operation in T&T waters.�
The national security and law enforcement doctrine preached, first, by the UNC and then by the PNM governments, ordained investment in air and naval craft to "interdict" the shipments of drugs and guns nightly speedboated to unprotected T&T shores.�In the logic of that doctrine, and with the evident abundance of illegal guns, if not also drugs, the "war on crime" must already be all but lost.�More and more, the eventual deployment of border-control assets along the shorelines promises to be no more decisive than rearguard actions. For now, every would-be bandit in need of a gun seems easily capable of finding his action.�Again, with hardly any sabres heard to rattle as she spoke, Queen Elizabeth's security reference also stirred memories of British training and direction of early T&T armed forces.
More than 40 years later, Raffique Shah still fondly recalls his own officer's finishing-school experience at Sandhurst in England.�Since it repulsed Abu Bakr's jihad in 1990, the Defence Force can claim victories only in its annexation of ever more land at Chaguaramas.�Nevertheless, the T&T Regiment has proved incapable of keeping records, satisfactory to a US trial court, of which soldiers are in which camps where and when. Nor can its quartermasters keep check of uniform gear issued to troops. Army fatigues keep showing up in the possession of bandits. The mystery of such criminal leakage appears unsolvable and unstoppable. As Elizabeth II suggested, however, help may be available from the Royal Logistic Corps. We have only to ask.