“Dey kicksin, kicksin all de time; dey blow­ing every­body mind…”

—Ex­plain­er

Shout­ing “cor­rup­tion” amounts to no more than a cam­paign­ing con game en­gaged in by the two ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The noise in­ten­si­fies close to an elec­tion. Sure it’s tir­ing and a drain on the pa­tience of those out­side of the fa­nat­ic fringe of the two par­ties, how­ev­er, the “ra ra” is far more de­struc­tive to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment than may seem at first con­tem­pla­tion.  

The rep­e­ti­tion of the al­le­ga­tions over a few decades with­out sub­stan­tial out­comes has dulled the sens­es and per­haps acts as a screen to our con­scious­ness to dis­cern the cor­rupt prac­tices which may in­deed be go­ing on be­low the sur­face. But for the po­lit­i­cal par­ties in­volved in the al­le­ga­tions and the coun­ters, the cor­rup­tion pro­pa­gan­da is not idle en­gage­ment. It serves the pur­pose of hard­en­ing and re­in­forc­ing racial an­tag­o­nisms in the in­ter­est of the lead­er­ship of the two par­ties. The fact is that the al­le­ga­tions con­tain the sub­lim­i­nal mes­sage that cor­rup­tion is na­tive to the eth­nic sup­port bases of the PNM and the UNC.

One el­e­ment of the mes­sag­ing tells the sup­port­er/vot­er that you will be serv­ing your eth­nic tribe a use­ful pur­pose by vot­ing to pro­tect the trea­sury from plun­der by the op­pos­ing racial group, whose in­stinc­tive na­ture is to “tief”.  

It is be­yond my own re­flec­tion and re­search in­to all the al­le­ga­tions and coun­ters made by the par­ties and in­di­vid­u­als, one against the oth­er, to know for cer­tain if any­one has served a few years in jail; but it is easy not to have a mem­o­ry of min­is­ters, politi­cians, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials charged, con­vict­ed and jailed for the many crimes they have been ac­cused of.

O’Hal­lo­ran was found guilty in a Cana­di­an court and his es­tate was made to pay a fine, Pre­vatt fled to Pana­ma, and a num­ber of for­mer min­is­ters are now be­fore the court, a few go­ing back more than 20 years.

Es­pe­cial­ly when in op­po­si­tion, po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and their par­ties swear to make those who have stolen from the State face the un­bend­ing force of the law if they were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gov­ern. The promis­es to “jail” the of­fend­ers fiz­zle in­to noth­ing­ness un­til the next elec­tion cam­paign and or when one of the par­ties gets in­to po­lit­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties for one rea­son or the oth­er. Then the al­le­ga­tions are warmed-over and fed to gullible par­ty fa­nat­ics.

It’s a grand strat­e­gy con­coct­ed and utilised by both par­ties to ei­ther win of­fice or pre­serve them­selves in pow­er. There is an un­writ­ten agree­ment be­tween the two sides to play the game on an elec­torate de­vot­ed to them by birthright, al­most. It’s a strat­e­gy which wins elec­tions and sep­a­rates the elec­torate in­to par­ty camps. Very de­struc­tive­ly, the po­lit­i­cal cam­paign theme of cor­rup­tion gives life and en­cour­age­ment to the elec­torate split in­to stereo­typ­ing camps: Those who are lazy and need cor­rupt deals to sur­vive, those whose busi­ness­es are based on kick­backs, and those who by ge­net­ics and cul­tur­al learn­ings are hard-wired to ex­ist in a cor­rupt en­vi­ron­ment.

What this cul­ture of cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions does is lock the two tribes in­to vot­ing blocs fixed against each oth­er. It’s a strat­e­gy which frees the par­ties from se­ri­ous na­tion­al de­bate on pro­pos­als for trans­form­ing the econ­o­my and so­ci­ety.

The above-com­bined ef­fort ac­counts for the votes of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 per cent of the elec­torate. On the side­lines are those who do not trust ei­ther of the par­ties, those who do not care–do not see any per­son­al and na­tion­al ben­e­fit, and a dwin­dling seg­ment of the elec­torate, even in­clud­ing those who vote for the two par­ties through habit, who may still be in­ter­est­ed in al­ter­na­tive pol­i­tics but whose trusts have been be­trayed on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions when elec­toral coali­tions have been en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly wel­comed.

Dis­en­chant­ment and loss of faith in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem al­so oc­cur when mat­ters which make it to the courts have been stuck there for­ev­er. In one dra­mat­ic mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar case, an Amer­i­can co-ac­cused with his Tri­ni col­lab­o­ra­tors has been tried, found guilty, served his prison time while the case against those here has not left the mag­is­trates’ courts.

Such fail­ure of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion sys­tems has di­min­ished trust not on­ly in the po­lice and ju­di­cia­ry but ex­tends to the wider gov­ern­ment which plays host to the law-mak­ing, law-keep­ing and pun­ish­ment ap­pa­ra­tus.

Par­lia­ment, the Cab­i­net and the ex­ec­u­tive have been per­ceived to be in­sti­tu­tions weak, in­ef­fec­tive and ma­nip­u­lat­ed by pow­er hold­ers gov­ern­ing in the in­ter­ests of an elite mi­nor­i­ty of the so­ci­ety.

All of this ra­di­ates out­wards in­to dis­trust, and dis­be­lief, es­pe­cial­ly out­side of the sup­port­ers of the par­ty in of­fice.

An IDB study found mis­trust by the pop­u­la­tion in the Gov­ern­ment and re­lat­ed in­sti­tu­tions to be high­est in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean com­pared to every oth­er re­gion in the world.

 “Trust and cit­i­zen­ship sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact all the key dri­vers of growth and in­equal­i­ty. Eco­nom­ic growth de­pends on pub­lic poli­cies in­sti­tu­tions to ac­com­mo­date and en­cour­age it. Mis­trust and weak bonds of cit­i­zen­ship dis­tort these.”  

The mi­nor­i­ty par­ties, wait­ing and hop­ing, are fol­low­ing suit, emp­ty rhetoric with no sub­stance.