Trinidad and To­ba­go is a coun­try which ex­pe­ri­enced a vast in­flux of im­mi­grants dur­ing the 19th and 20th cen­turies; an­ces­tors came from Africa and In­dia as slaves and in­den­tured labour­ers to work the fer­tile land for the Eu­ro­pean mag­nates.

Dis­crim­i­na­tion against race and colour, re­li­gion, gen­der, so­cial and eco­nom­ic, to name a few, al­ways ex­ist­ed.

In the 1950s, RACE and COLOUR as­cend­ed to the top of the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry lad­der. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, 70 years lat­er, this con­tin­ues un­abat­ed to oc­cu­py that “undis­tin­guished first place.”

In­di­vid­u­als and groups may at­tempt to rewrite, rein­ter­pret or even de­ny his­tor­i­cal events, but the fun­da­men­tal truth and im­pact of the past re­main.

In 1958, the Fed­er­al Elec­tion was held on March 25th and the Op­po­si­tion De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty (DLP), led by the late Bhadase Sagan Maraj, won six of the ten seats at stake. At a meet­ing on Tues­day, April 1st, the na­tion’s Chief Min­is­ter and the found­ing fa­ther of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Dr Er­ic Williams, of­fered his own rea­son for the de­feat of the PNM.

He scathing­ly at­tacked the DLP, ac­cus­ing it of con­duct­ing a cam­paign that ap­pealed for In­di­an votes to en­sure “an In­di­an Gov­er­nor and an In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter,” (Trinidad Guardian, April 2, 1958.)

He stressed: “The In­di­an na­tion was In­dia. It was a re­spectable, rep­utable na­tion, re­spect­ed the world over. It was not the ‘re­cal­ci­trant and hos­tile mi­nor­i­ty’ of the West In­dies mas­querad­ing and pros­ti­tut­ing the name of In­di­an for its self­ish and re­ac­tionary po­lit­i­cal end.”

The PNM, in the 1956 elec­tions, had a num­ber of promi­nent Mus­lims and Pres­by­te­ri­ans such as Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed, Oli Mo­hammed, Dr Ib­bit Mosa­heb and Dr Win­ston Ma­habir, but not one sin­gle Hin­du! In fact, for 30 years, un­til the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) changed our po­lit­i­cal land­scape in 1986, Hin­dus were blocked from the cor­ri­dors of pow­er by the PNM. Even a re­formed PNM un­der Patrick Man­ning con­tin­ued to dis­crim­i­nate against the In­di­ans, in par­tic­u­lar, the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty.

On Sep­tem­ber 10th, 2007, then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning told a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Pe­nal that his gov­ern­ment does not dis­crim­i­nate. The courts of the land, as well as the Privy Coun­cil in Eng­land, ruled against the Man­ning regime. Jus­tice Pe­ter Ja­madar ruled that the Trin­i­ty Cross, the high­est na­tion­al award, dis­crim­i­nates against Hin­dus and Mus­lims (Del­hi and Bangladesh).

The Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil al­so ruled that the PNM gov­ern­ment had dis­crim­i­nat­ed against the Ma­ha Sab­ha in the award­ing of a ra­dio li­cence. De­spite hav­ing an ap­proved ap­pli­ca­tion with the ra­dio fre­quen­cy as­signed, the PNM pre­ferred to give a ra­dio sta­tion to its par­ty sup­port­er and re­fused to award the Ma­ha Sab­ha.

A le­gal chal­lenge to this re­fusal was ini­ti­at­ed in the High Court in San Fer­nan­do, the Court of Ap­peal in Port-of-Spain and reached the Privy Coun­cil in Lon­don. At every lev­el, the Ma­ha Sab­ha won, but they had to threat­en con­tempt of court ac­tion be­fore the gov­ern­ment was forced to abide by the court’s de­ci­sion.

At sec­tion (4) of the Privy Coun­cil judg­ment, the Law Lords wrote, “The Court of Ap­peal was al­lowed to pro­ceed un­der a se­ri­ous mis­ap­pre­hen­sion in and through­out the course of two sub­stan­tial hear­ings. The Court of Ap­peal was twice al­lowed to give judg­ment on false promis­es.”

The case of many pub­lic of­fi­cials dis­crim­i­nat­ed against for pro­mo­tion, not for un­der­per­for­mance or non-per­for­mance, but race, colour, re­li­gion and gen­der. Fer­oza Ramjohn, a ca­reer diplo­mat, had her ap­point­ment to the post of Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands ve­toed. Chester Po­lo – Min­istry of Health; Dood­nath Ra­jku­mar—po­lice of­fi­cer—by­passed; Har­ri­dath Maraj, pro­mo­tion to Com­mis­sion­er of Trans­port, af­ter years of act­ing in the po­si­tion.

In Jan­u­ary 2013, the PNM’s can­di­date for the THA elec­tions was speak­ing in Rox­bor­ough and warned To­bag­o­ni­ans that “a Cal­cut­ta ship is com­ing down for you.” These com­ments were made in the pres­ence of Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

At the same meet­ing, Row­ley lat­er en­dorsed Sandy: “And, of course, the tire­less Hilton Sandy, he knows what it is to serve. He rep­re­sent­ed the PNM for decades. He has done a fan­tas­tic job in im­prov­ing the com­mu­ni­ty of Rox­bor­ough/De­laford, and he still has en­er­gy, that dri­ve, that de­sire and I ask you to sup­port Hilton Sandy and send him back there. Send him back to the THA.”

He added, “Let him bring his ex­pe­ri­ence to guide the young­sters who put him there.”

Nei­ther Row­ley nor the PNM con­demned Sandy, but in­stead en­dorsed him.

There are oth­er nu­mer­ous cas­es of dis­crim­i­na­tion; the PNM has al­ways been quick to chas­tise oth­ers while they have re­peat­ed­ly re­fused to dis­band them­selves from the doc­trines of racism.