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No press is bad press
Posted: Saturday, March 2, 2002
by Donna Yawching
AS ANY public relations consultant will tell you , there’s no such thing as bad press. Negative publicity is better than no publicity at all: at least it means that you’re still in the public’s eye. They can’t forget you, even if they despise what you’re doing.
This is clearly the strategy that governs Basdeo Panday’s actions, these days. Having, as I predicted, discovered that talk of legal action against the current government has done nothing to raise his profile, and in fact has achieved the exact opposite, Mr Panday is now struggling to stay afloat by grasping desperately at straws. He knows that in this country, out of sight is out of mind, and so he has decided to draw attention to himself at any cost.
Calling on his supporters for “civil disobedience” (with, in our particular situation, its obvious undertones of insurrection and potential racial violence) was sure to get him back in the news—and sure enough, since then (at least until Howard Chin Lee’s crime plan was launched with literal fanfares and drum-rolls, a bombastic act if I ever saw one), the media has talked of almost nothing else. Score one for Mr. P.
It is, however, a fragile success, and one that is likely to backfire. For one thing, his reference to two of the heroes of the 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, are worthy of nothing but ridicule: in fact, it’s amazingly reminiscent of Patrick Manning calling himself the Father of the Nation—and look where that got him. Mr Panday trying to compare himself to either of these two monumental men can be construed as either laughable, or as an insult (to them, as well as to our own intelligence). Either way, he is not doing himself any favours.
Various commentators have pointed out that Trinidad in 2002 has nothing in common with either colonial India or the American South in the 1960s. This is true. More significantly, Mr Panday has even less in common with either Gandhi or King. Both were men of peace, fighting for the people; Panday is, instinctively, a man of war, fighting for personal power. There’s a world of difference, and Trinidadians are not stupid enough not to recognise this.
Can we really believe that Panday’s motives are peaceful, when we think back on the inflammatory rhetoric he has been prone to throughout his history? Has anyone forgotten “No one shall escape unscathed;” “Do them before they do us”, and other such gems? When he talks now about a “long hot summer” of civil disobedience (and since when has T&T been blessed with a summer?), does anyone believe he’s referring to the weather?
There is irony here, of course. The man who is now proposing to rouse thousands (he hopes) to march in defiance of the authorities is the same one who, not so long ago, passed a law meant to suppress impromptu demonstrations by extending the time needed to apply for permission. Will his “civil disobedience” include marching without the proper permits? And will he then expect the police—the anacondas—to stand still and allow it? Or is he, in his heart, hoping for trouble, dreaming of martyrs (though not, of course, martyrdom!)?
Despite Panday’s (reluctant) declaration that his mobilisation campaign will be “lawful”, the fact is that civil disobedience is, by definition, the refusal to comply with certain laws. Not the “big” laws, necessarily, like those governing serious criminal activity; but laws, nevertheless.
For example, the law outlines a course of action regarding a certain activity—blocking the road, say; or paying a tax; and the protester chooses to disobey, and to take the consequences. The sit-down protests of the 60s and 70s were the prime examples of this concept: protesters allowed themselves to be bodily lifted and hauled away by policemen, without fighting back. Can anyone imagine a hard-back Trini doing this? Or, for that matter, a Trini policeman trying to move a person without sharing out a few lashes of the baton? Hardly.
This brings us to Attorney General Glenda Morean’s response to Panday’s “ad campaign”, which is all that this really is. She immediately sees blood. She’s right, of course: Panday’s proposed course of action could easily lead to bloodshed—in fact, he’s pretty much counting on it, to make his point about the dictatorial PNM government—but nevertheless, Morean has demonstrated her political inexperience by rising so readily to his bait. If, in the future, there’s the slightest physical conflict, Panday will lose no time in pointing out that she (or the police) went out looking for it. Morean should have just kept her mouth shut and let Panday spout his stupidness.
And stupidness is what it is, when you come right down to it. Mr Panday has missed one vital point: Trinidadi-ans do not demonstrate over matters of principle. Not these days. They will march for self-interest—salaries, retrenchments, working conditions: that kind of thing. But everyone—even Panday’s most ardent supporters—knows that in all this talk of civil disobedience, there’s nothing in it for them. They know that Panday’s rhetoric has nothing to do with civil rights or justice, but rather about personal power for a man who is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a Gandhi, a King, a selfless hero.
They may support Panday through tribal loyalty; but will they gather in their thousands, in the hot sun, to close down our streets, just because—like a spoilt child—he didn’t get his lollipop? I don’t think so. If either side felt that strongly about the political deadlock, Trinidad would long ago have been rocked by riots and counter-riots. So far, this hasn’t happened.
Essentially (and luckily) the population has accepted the status quo, though of course with the requisite grumbling on the losing side. But to translate that grumbling into serious social unrest, at the behest of one rabid politician? I think we’re too wise for that. Or at any rate, I certainly hope so.
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