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Crime and hypocrisy
Posted: Saturday, February 23, 2002
by Donna Yawching
IF ANY proof was needed that our businessmen are just as clueless as our politicians, it surfaced last week at a so-called Round Table meeting. No doubt resplendent in their custom-tailored suits and silk ties, the cream of our entrepreneurial crop solemnly discussed the growing problem of crime, and came up with a solution that said it all: Stop the Carnival. No mas in 2003. Keep all those naughty winer boys at home, and matter fix.
After I’d picked my jaw up off the floor, I could only shake my head in wonder. What planet do these people live on? Had they not noticed that crime was an issue long before Carnival, and that even now, two weeks later, we still seem to be averaging one murder a day, not to mention the run-of the-mill robberies, rapes, etc? What does Carnival have to do with it, besides providing, temporarily, a handy screen for a few extra pickpockets?
Even as the businessmen were pondering their brilliant proposal, a yachtie was being shot (post-Carnival) as he tried to prevent his boat from being stolen. Perhaps DOMA and the Chamber of Commerce will now suggest closing down all the marinas. (What is it with these foreigners, by the way? Don’t they have the sense not to chase after armed bandits? Maybe Tidco should be handing out little Robbery Etiquette guidebooks to all visitors at points of entry.)
The businessmen’s proposal is of course useless. Cancelling Carnival would have not the least effect on crime –beyond, possibly, exacerbating it, since vast numbers of people would be absolutely, and violently, furious if anyone had the arrogance to attempt such a foolish measure. Mr Manning (or Mr Panday, as the case might be) wouldn’t even need to have an election, at that point, to know that he’d better start packing his bags. If only for that reason, we can safely assume that this is one “solution” that will not see the light of day–in any government, PNM or UNC.
The strangest part of the “stop-Carnival” idea, however, is its source. Businessmen are the ones who profit most from Carnival.. Hotels and guest-houses need foreign visitors to survive: what in God’s name were the Hotel and Restaurant Association representatives thinking of when they voted for this proposal? I’ve never heard of a better way of shooting oneself through the foot –or rather, the heart.
Has it occurred to any of these geniuses that Carnival is the main reason tourists come to Trinidad, and that without this overriding attraction, they simply won’t come? Can there be any more “negative branding” of a country than that country cancelling its own national festival? Try to imagine the US calling off the Fourth of July. To close down Carnival would be the PR equivalent of taking out full-page ads in all the major world newspapers, to announce that T&T is a basket case and visitors better go elsewhere.
And, it should be added, the negative perception would not just fade away the following season: it would linger in the minds of the tourists and travel agents for years to come, just like a yellow fever scare. Talk about killing the goose that lays the golden (well, silver) egg!
The Round Table participants did come up with a few better ideas, such as surveillance cameras downtown and on the highways, and the excellent suggestion of easy-to-remember phone numbers for regional police stations–eg (area code)–COPS–assuming, of course, that the police bother to answer the phone.
But by and large, they have evaded the real issue that needs to be confronted if crime is to be kept under control: communal responsibility. It’s easy to turn the dogs and the army loose on the dealers and rude bwoys of Laventille and Morvant. There’s lots of nice drama in that: it makes for gripping news on TV6, and the grand bourgeois can nod sagely and say that at last the government is doing something. Since they themselves don’t spend much time in POS East, they don’t have to deal with any sticky questions about human rights, or the advisability of encouraging a police state. So what if the denizens of these areas are treated unconstitutionally? This is war!
Here is what the businessmen have not discussed: their own responsibility for making the community better, for making it a little more attractive for a ghetto youth to consider a “normal” life, as opposed to the gangsta scene. How many of these same businessmen, pulling down hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, are willing to pay a decent wage down at the bottom of the social ladder (and no, $60 a day is not a decent wage, in this day and age). The answer to that is dazzlingly clear any time a politician murmurs the dirty words “minimum wage” in the same breath as “increase”.
How many of them are ploughing any funds into the community, or providing assistance for training and education? How many are willing to participate in apprenticeship schemes, or provide company day-care for single working mothers? Why has every mid-sized to big corporation in this country not adopted a school and made it fit for human beings?
And most of all, why do these same businessmen, who are moaning about crime, remain complicit to criminal activity in their midst? Everyone knows that the Laventille pushers are the small fry; the driving force behind most organised criminal activity, including the drug trade, is to be found much higher up the social ladder: as always, the social rot starts at the top. This is a small, incestuous community: don’t tell me that the honest businessmen (if that is not an oxymoron) don’t know who the real, big-time criminals are.
Of course they do; and if they were really concerned about crime, they would come forward with the information. But they’re not. What all these Round Tables are really about is not crime, but property. Theirs. Until their priorities change, it is unlikely that anything else will.
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