It’s a phrase that stirs emo­tions in T&T—the one per cent, com­mon­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty.

On June 10, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie sin­gled out the com­mu­ni­ty us­ing that phrase—the one per cent—and al­lud­ed to that com­mu­ni­ty be­ing a gang.

This week, Guardian Me­dia ex­am­ines the one per cent class nar­ra­tive and the per­cep­tion it's shaped for that com­mu­ni­ty.

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

In June of 2017, a sin­gle seg­ment on the late chef An­tho­ny Bour­dain’s “Parts Un­known” culi­nary tele­vi­sion show sparked a ma­jor con­ver­sa­tion in T&T.

It threw the na­tion’s Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty in­to the spot­light, who were lat­er brand­ed as the coun­try’s “one per cent.”

Lo­cal busi­ness­man Mario Sab­ga-Aboud, who was one of sev­er­al guests on Bour­dain’s culi­nary and trav­el doc­u­men­tary, de­scribed the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty as the “small­est but most pow­er­ful.”

Busi­ness­man Pe­ter George, who was seat­ed at the din­ner ta­ble, es­ti­mat­ed the com­mu­ni­ty at un­der 5,000.

George said that at one time the coun­try had a huge mid­dle class, which was a sort of se­cu­ri­ty in terms of any pos­si­ble con­flict be­tween the “haves and have-nots.”

Sab­ga-Aboud apol­o­gised fol­low­ing a firestorm of crit­i­cism from fel­low cit­i­zens who felt his re­marks were in­sen­si­tive and ir­re­spon­si­ble.

There were al­so calls on so­cial me­dia for his chain of restau­rants to be boy­cotted.

Ian Smart, di­rec­tor of Smart En­er­gy, al­so staged a one-man protest in front of Rit­u­als in Mar­aval against what he said was “con­trol by the one per cent.”

Since then, the “one per cent” nar­ra­tive has stirred both cu­rios­i­ty and con­tro­ver­sy.

The term one per cent is used to de­scribe the wealth­i­est busi­ness peo­ple and po­lit­i­cal­ly in­flu­en­tial groups, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the con­text of eco­nom­ic and so­cial dis­par­i­ties.

Over the years, politi­cians and union lead­ers have pub­licly used the nar­ra­tive freely.

Days af­ter Bour­dain’s TV episode was aired, the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al, An­cel Ro­get, called for a boy­cott of those busi­ness­es owned by the na­tion’s “one per cent” rul­ing class.

Ad­dress­ing the union’s 78th an­nu­al con­fer­ence, Ro­get said work­ers had to un­der­stand the “na­ture of the bat­tle,” say­ing the elite in so­ci­ety had built their em­pires on the backs of the work­ing class.

Ro­get said that this group had be­come so em­bold­ened that they had stepped for­ward to iden­ti­fy them­selves as the small­est but most pow­er­ful, who had con­trol over the rest of us.

In the face of Ro­get’s call, the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­Cham) is­sued a state­ment, stat­ing that the union leader’s com­ments were not on­ly un­for­tu­nate but coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.

“In every coun­try where a mi­nor­i­ty has been per­se­cut­ed in an at­tempt to shift pow­er or in­flu­ence to an­oth­er group, the re­sult has been eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­cay,” Am­Cham said in its state­ment.

Am­Cham said it be­lieved that state­ments “such as these are very di­vi­sive and not in the best in­ter­est of the very work­ers that they are sup­posed to rep­re­sent.”

How the phrase

en­tered pol­i­tics

At a PNM meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do in Sep­tem­ber 2018, then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley lashed out at UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for ref­er­enc­ing him as an “Oreo” con­trolled by the “one per cent.”

Speak­ing to par­ty sup­port­ers, Row­ley made no apol­o­gy for rep­re­sent­ing the largest block of Syr­i­ans, Arabs and Lebanese in his Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy, as he slammed Per­sad-Bisses­sar, then op­po­si­tion leader, for de­scend­ing in­to “gut­ter pol­i­tics.”

Dur­ing a UNC Mon­day night fo­rum in Clax­ton Bay, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said, “They (one per cent) tried to own Mr (Patrick) Man­ning but they couldn’t do that...they tried to own me but I sent them pack­ing; they have their Oreo now who is their guy in Kei­th Christo­pher Row­ley, and that’s how the one per cent friends and fam­i­ly of Row­ley con­trols him.”

De­spite calls for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to apol­o­gise, she said there was not an io­ta of racism in her state­ment.

The fol­low­ing year, dur­ing a Labour Day cel­e­bra­tion in Fyz­abad, Ro­get stat­ed that the trade union move­ment and work­ing class were un­der at­tack by the then PNM gov­ern­ment and “one per cent,” just for speak­ing the truth.

Last year, in her sec­ond turn as Prime Min­is­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the es­tab­lish­ment of a gov­ern­ment com­mit­tee to ex­plore strate­gies for the re­open­ing of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery. Dur­ing last year’s Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions in Fyz­abad, she told hun­dreds of work­ers that she was part of them and not the “one per cent.”

AG’s con­tro­ver­sial state­ment

On June 10, the phrase took an­oth­er turn when At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, in iden­ti­fy­ing gangs in Par­lia­ment, said the phrase “one per cent” al­lud­ed to the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty as a gang.

At the time, he was sig­nalling the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to in­ten­si­fy its crack­down on or­gan­ised crime, stat­ing that au­thor­i­ties would pur­sue white-col­lar crim­i­nals and those who fa­cil­i­tate crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, re­gard­less of their wealth, sta­tus or in­flu­ence.

His com­ments gen­er­at­ed pub­lic dis­cus­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly among mem­bers of that com­mu­ni­ty, some of whom have in­ter­pret­ed the rhetoric as un­fair­ly cast­ing sus­pi­cion on suc­cess­ful busi­ness fam­i­lies.

Busi­ness­man Gary Aboud re­ject­ed the AG’s sug­ges­tion, say­ing the is­sue had evolved be­yond pol­i­tics and was now touch­ing on ques­tions of race, iden­ti­ty and na­tion­al uni­ty.

Aboud said he was trou­bled by what he viewed as an emerg­ing nar­ra­tive that equates fi­nan­cial suc­cess with crim­i­nal con­duct.

The Prime Min­is­ter, how­ev­er, threw her full sup­port be­hind the AG’s warn­ing that no seg­ment of so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing the “one per cent,” is be­yond the reach of the law, al­leg­ing that some cur­rent and for­mer se­nior bank­ing of­fi­cials fa­cil­i­tat­ed for­eign cur­ren­cy trans­ac­tions for lo­cal busi­ness­es linked to in­ter­na­tion­al drug car­tels.

Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der al­so de­fend­ed Je­re­mie’s con­tro­ver­sial use of the term “one per cent” dur­ing the de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency three weeks ago, ar­gu­ing that the phrase is glob­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with wealth and priv­i­lege rather than any spe­cif­ic eth­nic group.

“I have Syr­i­an an­ces­try and un­for­tu­nate­ly, tag­ging the word one per cent to the Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty hap­pened in a video that was done with An­tho­ny Bour­dain and that went vi­ral on its own,” Alexan­der said.

“But glob­al­ly, the term one per cent refers to the top one per cent of the wealth­i­est peo­ple in the coun­try. That is why we are the 99 per cent as a move­ment.”

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi dis­agreed with Alexan­der’s de­fence, in­sist­ing that the AG’s com­ments could on­ly rea­son­ably be in­ter­pret­ed as a ref­er­ence to the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty.

“He start­ed by read­ing the word­ing from Pe­ter George in an An­tho­ny Bour­dain in­ter­view. Af­ter he had done that, he then made ref­er­ence to one per cent own­er­ship of me­dia, which could on­ly be the Sab­ga fam­i­ly.”

Teelucks­ingh: Eco­nom­ic pow­er­house

For decades, the “one per cent” has not on­ly so­lid­i­fied its so­cio-eco­nom­ic po­si­tion but al­so ex­tend­ed its in­flu­ence over poli­cies, busi­ness trends and in­vest­ment di­rec­tions in the coun­try.

This is ac­cord­ing to Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er and his­to­ri­an Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh, who told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view last Fri­day that it was dif­fi­cult to elim­i­nate the “one per cent” be­cause they are en­trenched in our so­ci­ety.

The term “one per cent” gen­er­al­ly refers to the wealth­i­est and most in­flu­en­tial with­in small, priv­i­leged cir­cles.

This group, re­ferred to as the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, is said to hold a large por­tion of wealth, prop­er­ty and pow­er with­in the econ­o­my.

“Dis­man­tling them could lead to neg­a­tive con­se­quences. The en­tire one per cent class can­not sim­ply be seen as an eco­nom­ic en­e­my. We al­so need to be mind­ful that among the one per cent are those whose busi­ness acu­men and en­tre­pre­neur­ship en­abled them to pos­i­tive­ly con­tribute to our so­ci­ety.”

He em­pha­sised the com­plex­i­ty of the “one per cent’s” role, not­ing that while they hold sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic pow­er, their con­tri­bu­tion can al­so be ben­e­fi­cial.

The his­to­ri­an said it was dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine the ex­act year or mo­ment when the “one per cent” nar­ra­tive orig­i­nat­ed.

“All so­ci­eties have so­cial pyra­mids or hi­er­ar­chies. One’s po­si­tion at the top, as one per cent on the pyra­mid, could be de­ter­mined by one or more fac­tors such as eth­nic­i­ty, re­li­gion, wealth, na­tion­al­i­ty, oc­cu­pa­tion, fam­i­ly back­ground and skin colour.”

Teelucks­ingh re­called that for­mer union leader and prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day reg­u­lar­ly used the term “par­a­sitic oli­garchy,” which he re­ferred to as the “one per cent” who had po­lit­i­cal lever­age and con­trolled the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

“The term one per cent was not used, but the pub­lic cer­tain­ly knew the priv­i­leged, elite and in­flu­en­tial.”

Dur­ing the coun­try’s ear­ly his­to­ry, Teelucks­ingh said there were the priv­i­leged elites, Span­ish, French and British.

“Some be­longed to the planter class and would have been con­sid­ered the one per cent. And as a re­sult of gen­er­a­tional wealth, their de­scen­dants con­tin­ue to en­joy this in­flu­en­tial sta­tus and wealth. To­day in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we tend to make a sim­plis­tic clas­si­fi­ca­tion and iden­ti­fy all White and near-white per­sons as be­long­ing to the one per cent.”

He said it was easy to as­sume that the wealth­i­est of the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty be­long to the “one per cent.”

“The one per cent group is nei­ther ex­clu­sive nor sta­t­ic. It has evolved and will con­tin­ue to do so. The re­al­i­ty is that there have been changes, as a very small per­cent­age of per­sons of oth­er eth­nic groups, with sim­i­lar wealth, are part of this ex­clu­sive one per cent club.”

Over the years, Teelucks­ingh said the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty have faced push­back over the “one per cent” nar­ra­tive.

“It cre­at­ed a lev­el of mis­trust and would have dam­aged race and eth­nic re­la­tions.”

Teelucks­ingh re­called that dur­ing the Black Pow­er Move­ment in the 1970s, some of the peo­ple in the Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty were fear­ful of be­ing at­tacked.

But he said it is wrong to gen­er­alise and stereo­type an en­tire group as law­break­ers.

“The re­al­i­ty is that those who are guilty of be­ing in­volved in crime will tar­nish the im­age of the en­tire eth­nic group. The one per cent nar­ra­tive has al­so been heav­i­ly politi­cised. The pub­lic be­lieves that one po­lit­i­cal par­ty is giv­en fi­nan­cial sup­port and oth­er ad­van­tages by the one per cent, whilst the oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties are ig­nored.”

Teelucks­ingh said the “one per cent” nar­ra­tive has af­fect­ed busi­ness for the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty.

“How­ev­er, loy­al cus­tomers will con­tin­ue to sup­port their busi­ness. We like gos­sip that ma­ligns oth­ers. So it will be no sur­prise to hear deroga­to­ry re­marks con­tin­u­al­ly be­ing made about their busi­ness­es.”

Teelucks­ingh said while Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is sup­port­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s warn­ing that no seg­ment of so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing the so-called “one per cent,” is be­yond the reach of the law, they should not be wor­ried, as on­ly those who have act­ed un­law­ful­ly would be tar­get­ed and brought to jus­tice by the State.