The Ka­reem Mar­celle rant on a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) po­lit­i­cal plat­form about In­di­an and African mu­tu­al dis­like for each oth­er dis­turbed a lot of peo­ple.

There were four main cur­rents: 1) em­brace of Mar­celle and re­in­force­ment by the PNM hi­er­ar­chy and some sec­tar­i­an zealots, which is very sad; 2) an ap­peal for rea­son­able­ness by sev­er­al, sug­gest­ing that Mar­celle’s ap­proach was not de­sir­able, which is en­cour­ag­ing; 3) con­dem­na­tion of Mar­celle and/or the PNM for racism which, though a lit­tle ex­treme, is not un­ex­pect­ed; 4) see­ing this as an open­ing to en­gage racial and eth­nic is­sues in a more open and con­struc­tive man­ner that could be pos­i­tive and de­vel­op­men­tal, which prompts a hope­ful chord.

The state­ment by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, sug­gest­ing the Syr­i­an Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty might be a hotbed of white-col­lar crime, al­so dis­turbs.

Gary Aboud took an ex­treme po­si­tion: that this was the be­gin­ning of a fear­ful as­sault on the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, which might have to con­sid­er whole-scale mi­gra­tion.

Again, civ­il so­ci­ety point­ed out that there is a dif­fer­ence be­tween crim­i­nal in­di­vid­u­als from any com­mu­ni­ty and a com­mu­ni­ty of crim­i­nals. Racial broad brush­ing is of­ten where the prob­lem starts be­cause it is al­so there that weapon­is­ing be­gins. The Prime Min­is­ter in­ter­vened to point out that the phrase “one per cent” is broad­er than a sin­gle eth­nic group and re­al­ly rep­re­sents a mul­ti-racial elite, thus re­in­forc­ing the class di­men­sion of Trinidad and To­ba­go pol­i­tics.

What these two com­mu­ni­ca­tion in­ter­ven­tions re­veal is the ex­plo­sive col­li­sion in the pub­lic sphere of po­lit­i­cal rhetoric, crime man­age­ment strat­e­gy and

long-stand­ing so­cioe­co­nom­ic and eth­nic anx­i­ety. Eth­nic­i­ty in T&T pol­i­tics is the ba­sis of sol­i­dar­i­ty, iden­ti­ty, ag­gres­sion and scape­goat­ing. Dog whistling here has be­come a craft. The crime dis­cus­sion of­ten de­scends in­to eth­nic­i­ty, ex­pands in­to so­cioe­co­nom­ic con­sid­er­a­tions and veers to po­lit­i­cal align­ment. And be­cause mon­ey is so es­sen­tial­ly a part of pol­i­tics and par­ty as­cen­dan­cy and con­trol, crime and cor­rup­tion are of­ten the sub­ter­ranean cur­rents that make elec­toral suc­cess pos­si­ble.

Con­tem­po­rary po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists have tried to wres­tle with the eth­nic­i­ty, class and pow­er di­men­sions of po­lit­i­cal be­hav­iour. They have come up with the con­cept of con­struc­tivism, more specif­i­cal­ly so­cial con­struc­tivism, of­ten ex­tend­ed in­to in­sti­tu­tion­al­ism,  which such the­o­rists claim, con­di­tions po­lit­i­cal re­spons­es and be­hav­iour. For them, eth­nic iden­ti­ties are flu­id and so­cial­ly de­fined. There is al­so the con­cept of in­ter­sec­tion­al­i­ty, which fo­cus­es on how race, eth­nic­i­ty, class and pow­er in­ter­sect. So eth­ni­cal­ly root­ed po­lit­i­cal par­ties can in­flu­ence po­lit­i­cal be­hav­iour in their di­rec­tion, as can the class and oth­er eco­nom­ic di­vide di­men­sions that they em­brace. But how State in­sti­tu­tions work un­der po­lit­i­cal pow­er can al­so af­fect the eth­nic and/or class re­sponse be­hav­ioural­ly.

The con­cep­tu­al fram­ing has now moved away from pri­mor­dial­ism, which held cur­ren­cy for a long time - that racial iden­ti­ty is deeply tied to an­cient roots and blood­lines and deeply root­ed in cul­ture, which makes iden­ti­ty fixed. So­cial con­struc­tivism, in­sti­tu­tion­al­ism and in­ter­sec­tion­al­i­ty thinkers ar­gue that iden­ti­ties are con­struct­ed, de­ployed and har­vest­ed in pow­er sit­u­a­tions.

We do not, as cit­i­zens of T&T, de­clare our elec­toral pref­er­ence pub­licly, but in the US they do. The num­bers re­vealed this week by CNN show that 26% are reg­is­tered De­moc­rats, 27% reg­is­tered as Re­pub­li­cans and 47% reg­is­tered as In­de­pen­dents. I am on­ly spec­u­lat­ing here, but the 47% are prob­a­bly peo­ple fed up with the cul­ture wars and ex­trem­ist right and left po­si­tions and just want an Amer­i­ca gov­erned well with less noise.

That is about the same per­cent­age that did not vote based on the choic­es avail­able in 2025 in Trinidad and To­ba­go (46%). Why were these peo­ple mo­ti­vat­ed not to vote? It could be that they were fed up with the pol­i­tics. It could be that they could not sum­mon the will to vote for ei­ther par­ty.

Five hun­dred more peo­ple in a mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy vot­ing for you and 500 vot­ers stay­ing home could shift own­er­ship of most mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies in any gen­er­al elec­tion in T&T. This is some­thing for politi­cians to re­mem­ber when they speak.

In Au­gust, T&T will be 64 years old and in Sep­tem­ber, our Re­pub­lic 50 years old. Since 1962, close to $500 bil­lion (US $75b) of di­rect en­er­gy mon­ey has come to our coun­try and af­ter 64 bud­gets, and plen­ty race and class talk, here we are down again in an­oth­er bust phase of our boom/bust cy­cle. 

Bet­ter for the Gov­ern­ment to end the di­vi­sive talk, fix the econ­o­my and ush­er in so­lu­tions for eco­nom­ic growth, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, jobs and shared pros­per­i­ty.

And for the Op­po­si­tion, the line from “re­cal­ci­trant mi­nor­i­ty” to “they don’t like we and we don’t like them” is too long, too per­sis­tent. Time to cut loose.