What exactly proved the tipping point for child marriage laws last week?
Provisions (dating back in law to at least 1881) for marrying minors, retained in our current Hindu and Muslim acts, a 2013 United Nations poll revealed are opposed by modern Trinbagonians two to one, including just half of Hindus and Muslims. That's a smaller number than the same poll showed oppose discrimination against homosexuals. So why did a new PNM government, which hasn't enacted Equal Opportunity protections for gays the Commission keeps reminding it recommended two years ago, suddenly say it will change the marriage laws? Days after reading a prepared statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council defending not changing laws we admitted in 2012 were human rights issues. It didn't seem it was the weight of Algeria, Botswana, Chile, Paraguay, Sierra Leone and Slovenia all raising the issue, 86 states that backed two Council resolutions since our 2012 review, a General Assembly resolution that didn't need a vote, or that ending child marriage is now a UN Sustainable Development Goal.
The Hindu Women's Organization's thoughtful child marriage campaign ought to be in a public policy textbook. But it's been ongoing for years, and never swayed a Cabinet full of Hindus.
Was the only barrier to change a female leader who owed her anointment to a Hindu patriarch? Her legacy instead is a landmark child protection law that, in section 26, makes it unquestionably legal to sexually consummate a marriage to a child of any age. That same leader last week encouraged the current government to be brave on the issue. Her gender minister, who's made public comments she was instructed to preserve child marriage in law, howled; I thought it was a rare moment of Kamla's honesty.
Was it that all the work already been done by Brenda Gopeesingh and other Hindu women, or Verna, in her brief year in office, to prime the political space? And the issue just needed to get raised once post-Partnership? Or was it unseen hands of three Bishops girls every current executive decision must live with–the real reason the PNM pushed Ray TimKee off his mayoral ledge.
A scientist is now PM? Fellow geologist Patrick Manning infused faith into governance in uniquely troubling ways. Perhaps something more mature is happening in our democracy. Women march: a slutshaming mayor resigns. Drivers petition: Government takes heed speed limit enforcement might require raising it.
The smartest explanation on my Facebook page was "the media's artful ability to magnify a foolish quote", a reference to InterReligious Organisation head Harrypersad Maharaj's comments that girlchildren's age has nothing to do with maturity, easily paraphrased as "After 12 is lunch". Was this the own-goal by the IRO's conservatives what won the match? Or was it their transparent conspiracy to manipulate mainline Christian groups into a "unanimous" position against changing any laws about religion. An imaginary fear that led Baptist Archbishop Barbara Burke to sell off Hindu and Muslim girls so she wouldn't have to marry Hilda and Doris–something no church has been forced to in 22 countries with same-sex marriage. Church after church denounced the position, the Catholics calling it legalized statutory rape. The optics of Maharaj, Barbara Burke and ASJA's Abzal Mohammed on the CNews set were a sepia portrait of the past.
Raziah Ahmed, who's served as both gender minister and acting President, helped dig the hole. One of the best election soundbites of 2015 was the San Fernando West candidate saying while Faris Al Rawi might have the brawn, she had the belly. That belly was nowhere in evidence as she calling changing the laws a distraction and cited constitutional religious freedoms. Can local jihadists do the same?
Will the IRO survive this schism, and is its self-destruction good for all of us? My theory is that the domino in all this was the Chief Justice's front-page remarks in April at the BocasLitFest, asking whether we're a secular democracy or a theocracy, and citing child marriage. They are what got Bro. Harry's dhoti in a twist.
But maybe it was nothing in particular and everything at once. Increasingly in theorising the so-called 2011 Arab Spring of political activism or London's violent 2015 anti-government protests, thinkers note such "irruptions" are not at all linear. Maybe we should just push hard so we get to the other side of this. And see just how much brawn the AG has.
n Kevin Baldeosingh returns next week