Max­ie Cuffie

"I say let the 44,190 go in­de­pen­dent if they wish or, for that mat­ter, let them join a fed­er­al re­la­tion­ship with Grena­da and let Mor­gan Job be pres­i­dent.The re­sult will make the African pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad a small­er mi­nor­i­ty by an­oth­er two per cent. With the To­ba­go fig­ure tak­en out of the 2000 cen­sus fig­ures, the In­di­an ma­jor­i­ty will climb to 41.85 per cent while the African will slip to 35.04 per cent.

These cen­sus fig­ures that are be­ing sup­pressed have se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for the dis­burse­ment of funds for ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture, re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment and oth­er State re­align­ments."De­vant Ma­haraj: South Asian Out­look, No­vem­ber 2004.

I find no more (or less) racist De­vant Ma­haraj's rec­om­men­da­tion for eth­nic cleans­ing the Afro-Trinida­di­an pop­u­la­tion, than Hilton Sandy's crude, jin­go­is­tic ap­peal to To­ba­go vot­ers that has gen­er­at­ed so much po­lit­i­cal hys­te­ria in the last weeks of an ex­treme­ly bit­ter cam­paign for the THA elec­tions.

Both men are un­fit for pub­lic of­fice, not just be­cause their eth­nic ap­peals if tak­en to their log­i­cal con­clu­sions can do re­al harm, but be­cause they es­pouse views that, in the long run are not con­ducive to the greater har­mo­ny need­ed to de­vel­op the Trinidad and To­ba­go in which we would all like to live. But un­til we get there we are like­ly to see and vote sev­er­al of their avatars in­to of­fice.

Ma­haraj's views, which al­so ap­peared un­der the by­line of Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha leader Sat Ma­haraj in the Guardian of Au­gust 2004 (one can't be sure whether it was ghost-writ­ing or pla­gia­rism) are well known and have been ar­tic­u­lat­ed over a long pe­ri­od in pub­lic life, while Sandy is a rel­a­tive­ly un­known na­tion­al­ly but is a key fig­ure in To­ba­go's pol­i­tics where such jin­go­ism is worn as a badge of ho­n­our.

Ma­haraj, de­spite such views, for which he has nev­er apol­o­gised nor re­pu­di­at­ed a sin­gle word, has been a ris­ing star in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion where he was first ap­point­ed a state board chair­man, then min­is­ter of Trans­port and more re­cent­ly min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture. Sandy, an ap­point­ed as­sem­bly­man is seek­ing elec­tion, hav­ing been pre­vi­ous­ly ap­point­ed to the THA and been en­trust­ed with the po­si­tion of deputy chief sec­re­tary where he holds the piv­otal port­fo­lio of In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

Even if nom­i­na­tion day had not long since passed and with­draw­ing Sandy would not be tan­ta­mount to sur­ren­der­ing the dis­trict and the elec­tion to the TOP, the PNM would be hard pressed to with­draw Sandy for the same rea­son that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been un­able to jet­ti­son Ma­haraj whose words (and some­times quite rep­re­hen­si­ble) ac­tions are so dis­turb­ing to a sec­tion of the coun­try.

Both Sandy and Ma­haraj speak for large sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion, peo­ple for whom race mat­ters. For those of us se­cure in our mid­dle class val­ues and ed­u­ca­tion, the eth­nic­i­ty of who held what post would not mat­ter as long as they had the req­ui­site qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence. But for the peo­ple who still con­sti­tute a ma­jor­i­ty and who make up large blocks of the vot­ing base of our two ma­jor par­ties, race does mat­ter and peo­ple like Ma­haraj and Sandy speak for and on their be­half.

Po­lit­i­cal par­ties, those at least which seek to hold pow­er, un­der­stand this and are adept at ap­peal­ing to one con­stituen­cy and sooth­ing their eth­nic fears with­out alien­at­ing the oth­er de­ra­ci­nat­ed con­stituen­cy which con­sti­tutes a quite vo­cal mi­nor­i­ty. Sandy's true trans­gres­sion is his fail­ure to bal­ance his mes­sage to the two.

Most analy­sis of the eth­nic di­vide of­fer sim­plis­tic so­lu­tions (like form­ing a na­tion­al par­ty) to the chal­lenge of re­duc­ing eth­nic vot­ing, or sim­ply of­fer a de­scrip­tion of the phe­nom­e­non based on his­tor­i­cal so­ci­o­log­i­cal pat­terns rather than any pre­scrip­tions for its elim­i­na­tion. As­sum­ing, of course, that that is even a worth­while goal.

In a 1965 pa­per on The De­vel­op­ment and Per­sis­tence of Eth­nic Vot­ing, Ray­mond E Wolfin­ger ex­am­ined vot­ing be­hav­iour in the Unit­ed States and ar­gued that "one of the more re­mark­able ten­den­cies in po­lit­i­cal be­hav­iour is the per­sis­tence of par­ti­san af­fil­i­a­tions for gen­er­a­tions af­ter the rea­sons for their for­ma­tions have be­come ir­rel­e­vant to con­tem­po­rary so­ci­ety."

Af­ter ex­am­in­ing the per­sis­tence of eth­nic vot­ers in the Amer­i­can elec­torate de­spite so­ci­o­log­i­cal changes over time, he saw that such ten­den­cies are like­ly to last way in­to the fu­ture as any­one who fol­lowed the re­cent US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions can at­test.

Both our ma­jor par­ties, the PNM and the UNC, recog­nise the eth­nic vote will be crit­i­cal to win­ning any elec­tion. They are the base on which our two-par­ty de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem is built. If we are as high-mind­ed as we are pre­tend­ing to be, no one will need to call on Sandy to with­draw from the elec­tion and democ­ra­cy would take its course with the vot­ers re­pu­di­a­tion of his views. Ma­haraj would not even have been se­lect­ed as an elect­ed can­di­date far less be­ing a Cab­i­net min­is­ter.

And to show how hyp­o­crit­i­cal our politi­cians are, three years af­ter the pub­li­ca­tion of that ar­ti­cle Ma­haraj was se­lect­ed as a can­di­date to con­test the elec­tion, not by the eth­nic-vot­ing base of the UNC but by the high-mind­ed in­tel­lec­tu­als of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple on whose be­half he con­test­ed the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion in Cou­va South. The on­line dic­tio­nary de­fines 'To­ba­go love' as 'Dis­guis­ing one's feel­ings of at­trac­tion or love..." It is clear that when it comes to race talk, we have it bad.

Max­ie Cuffie runs a me­dia con­sul­tan­cy, In­te­grat­ed Me­dia Com­pa­ny Ltd, is an eco­nom­ics grad­u­ate of the UWI and holds an MPA from the Har­vard Kennedy School as a Ma­son Fel­low in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Man­age­ment.