Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Farm­ers were ac­tu­al­ly sur­prised that their crops were bull­dozed this week? For the al­ready dis­il­lu­sioned, this Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment seems to be on­ly a rein­car­na­tion of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is- tra­tion and the cal­lous de­struc­tion of crops in Pineap­ple Cres­cent and Ch­agua­nas was sim­ply an­oth­er man­i­fes­ta­tion of that fact.There are larg­er is­sues at play here but I should first at­tend to the ob­vi­ous. Set­ting aside is­sues of land tenure, there is ab­solute­ly no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the wan­ton de­struc­tion of crops. HDC hon­cho Jear­lean John was hap­py to whit­tle it down to a sim­ple is­sue of "there will nev­er be a right time" (to re­move the farm­ers). It is true that there will nev­er be a right time but there is cer­tain­ly the right way and that was stu­dious­ly avoid­ed.

Con­se­quent­ly, Jear­lean John bore the brunt of the farm­ers' an­i­mus: she was a heart­less agent of the State who sent bull­doz­ers like a thief ...in the day...on a pub­lic hol­i­day, while all the farm­ers were mas­ti­cat­ing their duck by a riv­er some­where.To be clear, as Ms John point­ed out, her re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to im­ple­ment the hous­ing pol­i­cy of the State un­der the law and noth­ing more. Yet she was con­demned as an em­bed­ded, in­sid­i­ous ves­tige of the PNM gov­ern­ment bent on em­bar­rass­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship.

It is odd that the ra­bid sup­port­ers of the Gov­ern­ment have al­ready for­got­ten that Jear­lean John was ac­tu­al­ly a UNC gov­ern­ment min­is­ter be­fore she was draft­ed by the PNM as the chair­man of Ude­cott. She is not a rare crea­ture. In­deed, many peo­ple in this coun­try align them­selves with whichev­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty is in of­fice at the time to se­cure their for­tunes. It is an al­most prim­i­tive hu­man sur­vival re­sponse in our ut­ter­ly flawed so­ci­ety.The in­escapable fact is that Jear­lean John is not mind­ing a fleet of bull­doz­ers at her home, al­ways diesel-ed up and ready to do her das­tard­ly bid­ding. Next you will have bull­doz­ing the neona­tal ward at the Mt Hope hos­pi­tal! Any de­ci­sion which Ms John ex­e­cutes is done at the be­hest of the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment.

Was she heart­less in the way she went about it? Most cer­tain­ly! She was not, how­ev­er, hired to run the St Vin­cent de Paul So­ci­ety. For sup­port­ers of the Gov­ern­ment, though, she would stand in quite well as the bobolee to be beat­en.The bull­doz­er's blade not on­ly ex­posed the sweet pota­to and oth­er starchy tu­bers, but laid bare a fun­da­men­tal prob­lem con­fronting the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship.Any no­tion that this could have been a case of egre­gious mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing was eas­i­ly rub­bished when the farm­ers emerged even more in­censed from a meet­ing with both this past Thurs­day.

I could imag­ine Vas­ant Barath on the phone with his Cab­i­net col­league, "Like you eh fine I sit­ting in enough hot wa­ter, you put on ah nex ket­tle! I jess fin­ish tell de farm­ers so longst as dey plant­i­ng de lan' we go reg­u­larise dem and meh words eh even get cole and you bull­dozin' bo­di all about de place! Oh lorm man, you coul­da wait one munt fuh peo­ple to fuhget what ah did say!"

Now I have been fol­low­ing the Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter since he shared the stage with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an at the post-bud­get pub­lic fo­rum. What I heard from him then seemed to be a lu­cid and promis­ing strat­e­gy to sal­vage agri­cul­ture. Per­haps about two weeks ago, the min­is­ter al­lud­ed to an un­de­ni­able truth-if the Gov­ern­ment were to evict every farmer squat­ting on state land there would be no lo­cal food pro­duc­tion what­so­ev­er.

Of course, farm­ers will have you be­lieve that we will all starve and start eat­ing our pets. It is no se­cret though that the agri­cul­ture sec­tor pro­vides a mere frac­tion of what is con­sumed lo­cal­ly. A food im­port bill of $4 bil­lion makes that pa-tent­ly clear. For the min­is­ter to then re­turn af­ter the blade of the bull­doz­er has fall­en and sug­gest that there is lit­tle he can do be­cause the lands tar­get­ed for clear­ing do not fall un­der his min­istry, well that is just plain con­fus­ing.

Even more con­fus­ing was the state­ment made by the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as "un­for­tu­nate" and said that the Gov­ern­ment does not crave con­fronta­tion. He went on to say that "...of course the farm­ers will be com­pen­sat­ed and re­lo­cat­ed."Lis­ten­ing to his sac­cha­rine words of re­as­sur­ance one would get the im­pres­sion that some un­seen alien over­lord was re­spon­si­ble for the de­struc­tion of the farm­ers' crops.Now could it be that notwith­stand­ing the stat­ed wish­es of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, the stub­born­ly mov­ing cogs in the ma­chin­ery of the State ap­pa­ra­tus are no re­specter of this "change that you can be­lieve in" crap?

Those mel­liflu­ous notes flow off the tongue when in Par­lia­ment or af­ter hav­ing been dili­gent­ly prepped for the tele­vi­sion in­ter­view. Con­fronting the be­he­moth that is state agen­cies, the pub­lic ser­vice and all of the oth­er arms of gov­ern­ment steeped in the finest tra­di­tions of in­ep­ti­tude and for­ev­er mired cor­rup­tion, po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age and gen­er­al de­cay, well that is an­oth­er sto­ry.It re­minds me of a rel­a­tive­ly re­cent re­make of a film called The Time Ma­chine in which the char­ac­ter makes mul­ti­ple at­tempts to change the past to save the life of his beloved. In his deep­en­ing frus­tra­tion, he de­liv­ers this po­et­ic line: "I could re­turn a thou­sand times and watch her die a thou­sand dif­fer­ent ways..."

There may be many in gov­ern­ment who were gen­uine­ly hyp­no­tised by the "change" mantra, but they are just be­gin­ning to slow­ly re­alise that they are bat­tling an in­sid­i­ous and over­whelm­ing­ly malev­o­lent force vest­ed in our in­sti­tu­tions against which their ide­olo­gies can­not pre­vail. We can re­turn to the polls a thou­sand times and suf­fer the same in­dig­ni­ties of poor gov­er­nance in a thou­sand ways.In my last in­ter­view with for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira, even she did not share the blind op­ti­mism of some of her Cab­i­net col­leagues and I could see it in her eyes, "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it did toll fuh she."As she pre­pared to walk off the set at the end of the in­ter­view, as if to give a part­ing com­ment to all of the un­re­lent­ing crit­i­cism that she and her gov­ern­ment faced, she said to me, "It is one thing to talk, but when you get in there it is an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent ball game."

It rings so true to­day; all of the ide­al­ists who be­lieved that they could achieve change from with­in are be­gin­ning to see that they in­stead are be­ing al­tered by that which they wished to change. Lloyd Best spent his en­tire life point­ing out that our politi­cians and peo­ple are mere wil­lows in a dele­te­ri­ous gov­er­nance con­struct. We, the elec­torate, plant dasheen and ex­pect to reap corn in six months. When it does not work we just dig it up and plant again. This will for­ev­er be our bit­ter har­vest should we con­tin­ue to avoid those tough in­sti­tu­tion­al changes, some of which car­ry po­lit­i­cal con­se­quences.