By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 27, 2007

The main problem with Professor Hamid Ghany’s analysis (“Prepare for Constitutional Debate,” Guardian, Nov. 18, 2007) is that it fails to take the views of ordinary people into consideration and leaves East Indians out of the constitutional debate for which he wishes to prepare us. Professor Ghany extols the wisdom of Major Wood and argues that “the whole history of the African population of the West Indies inevitably drives them towards representative institutions fashioned after the British model.” If he wishes to cite historical examples to clarify African agency and the struggle for representative government there is no sound reasons why he could not go back to the Baptist War in Jamaica (1831); Daaga uprising in Trinidad (1837); or the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica (1865). If he wanted to take an inter-racial perspective-after all we live in an interracial society-he could have gone back the major Indian panchayat in Tacarigua in 1899 when East Indians rescued the leadership of their group from John Morton and signaled their independence. Trinbagonians have always rejected authoritarian rule and spoke up for themselves.
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