Prof Hamid Ghany

In Sea­son 9, Episode 7 of his se­ries Parts Un­known, which aired on CNN on June 25, 2017, the late An­tho­ny Bour­dain may not have re­alised that he was about to cause the po­lit­i­cal vo­cab­u­lary of Trinidad and To­ba­go to be changed for­ev­er. That par­tic­u­lar episode was ded­i­cat­ed to T&T.

All oth­er seg­ments of the show about dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties passed by with­out con­tro­ver­sy, ex­cept for one seg­ment that caused con­sid­er­able con­tro­ver­sy ever since it was aired.

What was said that could have caused such dis­qui­et? Most peo­ple in this coun­try have nev­er ac­tu­al­ly seen the doc­u­men­tary, as it had re­stric­tions on its air­ing and has nev­er been shown pub­licly on tele­vi­sion here. It is avail­able on Youtube, but for some rea­son it is ob­vi­ous that there is a gen­er­al ig­no­rance about what the con­tent was all about.

The hul­la­bal­loo sur­round­ed state­ments that were made in the doc­u­men­tary by two promi­nent busi­ness­men. About 18 min­utes in­to the doc­u­men­tary, the first one said the fol­low­ing:

“It start­ed in 1898, more than a hun­dred years ago. Most of the Chris­tians were be­ing per­se­cut­ed by the Turks, so there was an ex­o­dus of Chris­tians leav­ing Syr­ia. They board­ed the ships from Beirut, and as long as it was head­ing west, they thought they were go­ing to Amer­i­ca. Many of our par­ents land­ed in Trinidad, and that’s when we start­ed. That’s the first gen­er­a­tion.”

Sub­se­quent ex­cerpts in­clude the fol­low­ing state­ments:

“…Ac­tu­al­ly we are the small­est eth­nic group.”

The sec­ond busi­ness­man then chimes in to say:

“But the most pow­er­ful, al­most the most pow­er­ful. Small­est but the most pow­er­ful.”

It was that part of the doc­u­men­tary that has al­tered the po­lit­i­cal vo­cab­u­lary of this coun­try for­ev­er. It was an un­forced er­ror that was un­nec­es­sary. It has led to all kinds of in­ter­pre­ta­tions ever since then. The term “one per cent” was born out of an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of those few sen­tences.

The so­ci­etal re­ac­tion was so neg­a­tive that the busi­ness­man who ut­tered the words took re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and of­fered an apol­o­gy.

In a state­ment is­sued by busi­ness­man Mario Sab­ga-Aboud the next day, he said:

“On the re­cent­ly broad­cast CNN show Parts Un­known I used care­less words in re­fer­ring to the stand­ing of cit­i­zens of Mid­dle East­ern de­scent in our so­ci­ety, and end­ed up mis­rep­re­sent­ing my­self and my val­ues…” (Ex­press, June 26, 2017).

Ian Smart, di­rec­tor of Smart En­er­gy, staged a one-man protest on Mar­aval Road and re­ferred to the “con­trol by the one per cent.” (Ex­press and C News, June 26, 2017).

Our po­lit­i­cal vo­cab­u­lary has nev­er let go of this new ter­mi­nol­o­gy used by Smart. Sab­ga-Aboud end­ed his state­ment by say­ing:

“Though I can­not re­tract my words, I hope that you all recog­nise my re­morse and ac­cept my sin­cere apol­o­gy.”

The mat­ter seemed to have end­ed there and the term “one per cent” joined the reg­u­lar lin­go of our pol­i­tics and has been loose­ly used across the board through­out the so­ci­ety to rep­re­sent a class of peo­ple rather than a race of peo­ple.

Last week­end, there was the re­lease of an au­dio record­ing of a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion that re­ferred to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as a “stink­ing c****e”, which has caused con­sid­er­able dis­qui­et hav­ing re­gard to who it is al­leged ut­tered the words in that con­ver­sa­tion. This has now re­vived the con­tro­ver­sy of the 2017 Bour­dain doc­u­men­tary.

Hav­ing re­gard to the po­lit­i­cal con­tes­ta­tion in­volved, those who are op­posed to the Prime Min­is­ter and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress have now found fur­ther grounds to chal­lenge her Gov­ern­ment over the State of Emer­gency and the use of Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs). The Prime Min­is­ter is not back­ing down and she is pre­pared to wear the in­sult as a badge of ho­n­our as she fends off at­tacks from her po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents across the board. Vir­tu­al­ly sim­i­lar com­ments were made about a cur­rent work­ing jour­nal­ist.

All of this has caused a vol­ley of words to be thrown around on the in­sults. There are those who have cho­sen to de­fend it and oth­ers who have con­demned it.

This phe­nom­e­non of de­fend­ing it re­calls the works of the Mar­tini­can psy­chi­a­trist and philoso­pher, Frantz Fanon, in his 1952 book Black Skin, White Masks and his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth.

The last gen­er­al elec­tion was about class, not race. The term “one per cent” has been lib­er­al­ly used to re­flect a cer­tain class of peo­ple. It has come from the af­ter-ef­fects of the Bour­dain doc­u­men­tary.

The Prime Min­is­ter sig­nalled from very ear­ly, with her re­peat­ed ref­er­ences to the coun­try ex­ist­ing be­yond the Port-of-Spain light­house, that the psy­che of the coun­try had to ac­cept all oth­ers.

She is now fight­ing a bat­tle about class and priv­i­lege that is clothed with racial slurs.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI. He was se­lect­ed by the THA to guide the dis­cus­sions on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.