“The sins of the fa­thers shall be vis­it­ed up­on the sons.”

Some­thing con­fus­ing oc­curred last Thurs­day, May 28. It start­ed with a news re­port that Fuad Abu Bakr, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion, was go­ing to be screened by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment as a can­di­date to con­test the Port-of-Spain South seat. While this was con­firmed by Mr Bakr, the PNM is­sued a press re­lease re­fut­ing his claim. Even the Prime Min­is­ter com­ment­ed that Mr Bakr’s name was not on the list of nom­i­nees. Much like the chang­ing sto­ry of the March 27 meet­ing, the pub­lic is left to ask, “Who and what are we to be­lieve?” Both sto­ries can’t be true… or can they?

I don’t be­lieve that Mr Bakr would make such a bold­faced lie, go­ing so far as to show up at Queen’s Hall un­in­vit­ed. So let’s as­sume that there’s some truth to his claim—what are the pos­si­ble mo­tives and im­pli­ca­tions for the PNM to as­so­ciate it­self with him?

First­ly, let’s ad­dress the ob­vi­ous is­sue. Fuad is the son of Yasin Abu Bakr (born Lennox Philip), the man who led the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup. That was 30 years ago. But it rais­es the ques­tion of the elec­torate’s abil­i­ty to sep­a­rate the (good?) in­ten­tions of the son from the mis­deeds of the fa­ther.

Putting aside that risk, there’s al­so the fact that Mr Bakr, if he were to be cho­sen, would be a po­lit­i­cal neo­phyte. On one hand, we shouldn’t dis­miss the par­ty’s in­cli­na­tion to in­clude fresh faces; we saw this with the ap­point­ment of me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Ja­son “JW” Williams to the Sen­ate. But on the oth­er, this gov­ern­ment has learnt the hard way that new­com­ers have a propen­si­ty of turn­ing in­to li­a­bil­i­ties. Dr Lovell Fran­cis, Dar­ryl Smith, Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith, Nicole Olivierre, Sham­fa Cud­joe, and Stu­art Young have all been marred in con­tro­ver­sy. Their ac­tions have con­tra­dict­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s boast that his gov­ern­ment would re­turn moral­i­ty to pol­i­tics. The screen­ing process could be a way of “clean­ing house”—to get rid of those mem­bers who have brought the par­ty in­to dis­re­pute. If they dis­ap­pear from the Par­lia­ment, so does the scan­dal.

That makes the choice of seat that Mr Bakr would sup­pos­ed­ly have filled an in­ter­est­ing one. Cur­rent­ly, it is be­ing held by Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, whose po­si­tion in the par­ty has been in jeop­ardy fol­low­ing her ar­rest on charges of cor­rup­tion. Since she has the sup­port of her con­stituents, this would have been a cal­cu­lat­ed move to re­place her with some­one who would be ac­cept­ed based on name recog­ni­tion. That’s what hap­pened to Ran­dall Mitchell, who was pushed aside in favour of Brain Man­ning, the son of the late Patrick Man­ning. One can’t de­ny that the Bakr name holds some weight in cer­tain “hot spot” com­mu­ni­ties.

Par­ty machi­na­tions aside, what are Faud Abu Bakr’s in­ten­tions? Since form­ing the NNV in 2010, he has crit­i­cised the PNM and UNC, de­scrib­ing them as two sides of the same cor­rup­tion-stained coin. That’s been his cen­tral ar­gu­ment as to why a “third force” is nec­es­sary to change our po­lit­i­cal land­scape. To his cred­it, he has man­aged to keep him­self in the me­dia spot­light (though his last name does help). He cam­paigned heav­i­ly in the East-West cor­ri­dor in the last two elec­tions. And in Feb­ru­ary of this year, he at­tend­ed for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day’s “small par­ty uni­ty” meet­ing. It’s clear that he has po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tions, and his will­ing­ness to align him­self with the PNM on­ly proves that. Grant­ed it’s easy to la­bel him a hyp­ocrite for do­ing so af­ter lam­bast­ing them, but he won’t be the first po­lit­i­cal op­por­tunist who switched al­le­giances. That’s a char­ac­ter flaw vot­ers could look past once his name is next to the cor­rect par­ty sym­bol.

Now, again, all of this is pure­ly spec­u­la­tive. The PNM has made its choice of can­di­date for the Port-of-Spain South seat… and it’s nei­ther Ms Mc­Don­ald nor Faud Abu Bakr. But what’s the truth be­hind the con­fu­sion? Was he sched­uled to be screened and the par­ty backed out be­cause of the neg­a­tive pub­lic sen­ti­ment? That could very well be the ex­pla­na­tion… and here’s why.

The biggest chal­lenge to Fuad’s cred­i­bil­i­ty is his con­nec­tion to Yasin Abu Bakr, and it’s not just be­cause he is his son. To date, he has nev­er de­nounced his fa­ther for the 1990 coup. Dur­ing a 2015 in­ter­view with a news web­site, he said his fa­ther did what he thought was best for the coun­try. That’s un­ac­cept­able. Let me be clear— I am not say­ing that he should be judged on his fa­ther’s ac­tions. But if he can’t un­equiv­o­cal­ly state that what his fa­ther did was wrong, then how can he be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly when it comes to good gov­er­nance.

His fa­ther led a vi­o­lent in­sur­rec­tion; peo­ple died, part of the cap­i­tal was razed, and mil­lions of dol­lars in prop­er­ty was lost. It would be an in­sult to the mem­o­ry of those cit­i­zens who lost their lives, and to the rest of the pop­u­la­tion who lived through those ter­ri­fy­ing events, to have him sit in our Par­lia­ment with­out mak­ing his po­si­tion clear re­gard­ing the man who stormed that build­ing with the in­ten­tion of over­throw­ing what it stood for. That’s not his fa­ther’s sin… that’s his own.