Independent - September 01, 2000
By Raffique Shah
So, you are 38 years-old, independent Trinidad and Tobago. Congratulations! And to add a truly Trini flavour to the celebrations, I ask, the way our soca bards do at Carnival fetes: How yuh feeling, T&T? Frankly, if we must be honest in answering the rhetorical question, we should all shout in unison: Rotten! And I mean it. In the global scheme of things, as the intellectuals would put it, 38 years is miniscule when compared with nations that have been in existence as autonomous states for 200 years and more. Indeed, many countries count their political history in thousands of years (China, Japan, parts of Africa and the Middle East), and yes, if we compare our current circumstances with theirs, we haven't done too badly.
But one does not measure one's morals by standards set by the Dole Chadees of the society, or the majority of our self-seeking politicians for that matter: they are but flip-sides of the same coin. Given the period in which we achieved independence from Britain (man had already ventured into space), the relative abundance of our natural resources and the rich human resources that colonialism, however exploitative it was, left us, we should have been much better off than we are today. And I'm not referring to the material aspects of development, which, while they are important in relation to standards of living, have little impact on our human development.
Really, if we put this 38 year-old nation under the microscope, we'll see some flaws that are as worrisome as they are embarrassing. I don't mean to knock our politicians (hell, I've grown fed up of bashing them over they years, and to no avail, I need add), but since they have put themselves in the firing line, they must face the fusillade. The legacy they have inherited of using office to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of the nation is probably the least of their sins. But it's the most visible. Check out the number of politicians who entered the fray (they don't necessarily need to be in Parliament) with backgrounds and financial positions just like any ordinary citizen.
In short time, though, you see them driving (or being chauffeur-driven) expensive limousines (well, I suppose, they are entitled to interest-free loans from the public purse). Most times they move house, from humble-to-well-to-do neighbourhoods to elitist, not to add prohibitively expensive, residential districts. They acquire airs (not what we breathe, eh) faster than they do properties. And lately, they have grown au courant with off-shore banking to the extent that they know the faceless owners and managers by..er face. In contrast, many of them hardly know the roads or people in their constituencies, except when election comes around and suddenly, as Billy Ocean sang, they're in love-with all electors, the way I see them hugging and kissing from snatty-nosed children to village vagrants.
Worse than these sins of commission (as in agents) is the contempt with which they treat the very people who put them in office, be it government or opposition. Shortly after he assumed office as Prime Minister, Basdeo Panday pounded the PNM for putting the Atlantic LNG plant in La Brea, where, he and his ministers argued, the soil was unsteady. The plant, if erected at La Brea, would have been a ticking-time-bomb (reminds me of Ramesh Maharaj's comments, when he was in opposition, about the Point Lisas industries in relation to the nearby residential and commercial districts). So it was moved to Point Fortin.
Last week, Mr Panday turned the sod to begin construction of the T&T Institute of Technology (TTIT), a most desirable vocational institute, I should say. But where is it sited? Immediately next door to the 60 year-old Brechin Castle sugar factory, and downwind of it at that. Now, although the factory, which emits a deadly combination of dust, grime, smoke and soot, was built long before the residential communities around it, it has been under attack for its hazardous environmental emissions. I shudder to think what the staff and students of the TTIT will be subjected to. Even the building will be covered in dust, so one can only imagine what the lungs of those who attend the institute will be exposed to. Unless, that is, Mr Panday plans to close down the B.C. factory.
But our politicians, as errant and deviant as they are, are only a small part of the shame we must bear as a 38 year-old nation. Let us look at ourselves, our behaviour at the workplace, on the roads, and even in our neighbourhoods. I have long insisted that if, as a workforce, we achieved a 75 per cent productivity level, this country would have been the envy of economic exemplars like Singapore. But few people give more than 25 per cent of their capacity. We can start in newsrooms (no, I am not about to exonerate my colleagues in journalism), move to the factory floor, skip across to shops in any town or city, or park up against a URP hoe (note my correct spelling!), the story is the same.
The "productivity" part of our national "watchwords" was thrown out of the window well before independence and Dr Williams's exhortation to the nation on that inauspicious day in 1962. Well, it was he who invented "Special Works", that novel mechanism of paying people for propping up hoes and shovels and "water carriers"! As for the "discipline" part, that was unachievable before it was uttered. As a people, we are so undisciplined and inconsiderate, it's a shame. You see it in communities where bully-type residents clog up natural watercourses at the expense of their neighbours. Driving on the roads, you see power-windows of modern limousines wound down-to enable the drivers or passengers to toss out their "doubles" bags or empty beer bottles. No consideration is given to the adverse impact of such inconsiderate behaviour. And I haven't touched on stunt driving on the highways and even in residential areas.
Regarding tolerance, the least said the better. From top to bottom, Prime Minister to vagrant, tolerance is alien to us. We cannot agree to disagree, as is common in most civilized countries. Once someone disagrees with you, he is deemed an enemy. Religion, that one-time bastion of peace and humility and tolerance, has become a hotbed of strife because of an absence of tolerance. Really, listening to some of our religious leaders nowadays, one detects little difference between them and politicians. And that is no compliment! We are cursed with outright hogs-wearing-dhotis-or-kurtas to be-gowned pigs and outright ignoramuses preaching pure hate. So one cannot seek solace even in the sanctity of churches or mandirs or mosques.
No, at 38 we come across more like cocaine-plied-pipers than a nation striving for excellence in all fields of endeavour. It's not that we don't have blessings we can count on, achievements that make us proud. But the negatives far outweigh the positives. And given the fact that we are cursed with leaders who have feet of clay and no vision, I fear that unless we change course radically, especially in our minds, we are destined to remain a Third World wasteland that has "piped" away its First World resources.
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Copyright © Raffique Shah
