Trinicenter.com
Trinidad and Tobago News
 
 Time
Caribbean Links

COLUMNISTS
Ras Tyehimba  
Susan Edwards  
Dr. K Nantambu  
Winford James  
Dr. S Cudjoe  
Raffique Shah  
Terry Joseph  
Bukka Rennie  
Denis Solomon  
Stephen Kangal  
Corey Gilkes  
A.S. Leslie  
Shelagh Simmons  
Guest Writers  

Affiliates
TriniSoca.com  
TriniView.com  
Trinbago Pan  
Nubian School  
RaceandHistory.com  
Rootsie.com  
RootsWomen  
HowComYouCom  
AmonHotep.com  
Africa Speaks  
Rasta Times  
US Crusade  


Send in the clowns
Posted: Sunday, May 19, 2002

By Donna Yawching

BASDEO Panday, the Conspiracy King, strikes again. When he was in power, there were always conspiracies to overthrow him. Terrorists hid under every bed. The President, Abu Bakr and CCN were all plotting his downfall. To hear him speak, anyone would have assumed T&T to be a hotbed of sedition.

Sadly for Mr Panday’s sense of melodrama, no coup occurred. Not an external one, at any rate, and certainly not one including his favourite suspects. He was forced to demit office tamely, via the boring route of an election. The conspiracy-weary breathed a sigh of relief: at least we would not have to listen to any more of that stupidness—or so we foolishly believed.

No such luck. As Parliament was about to convene, Mr Panday discovered another conspiracy: one to kidnap him (or members of his “Cabinet”) in order to allow the PNM a parliamentary majority. More drama. Instead of hiring armed security to protect himself and his Merry Men, Mr Panday organised a pyjama party in Crowne Plaza. The Crowne Plaza being a stronghold of international renown, no one got kidnapped. Amazing.

Now, Mr Panday is seeing conspiracies again (let’s forget the byzantine mutterings about a conspiracy between Messrs Manning and Robinson to keep Bas out of office; that one’s too tame. No pyjamas or special costuming needed). This time, the UNC leader is babbling of a plot to arrest him. For what, he doesn’t say. Whatever it is, of course, it will be a “false charge”.

There are quite a few things that Mr Panday isn’t mentioning. Whether or not there are plans afoot to arrest him, the fact is we still have enough of a democracy extant in this country so that arrests do not occur by “plots”. They occur when the evidence justifies it. In other words, if someone were to serve Mr Panday a warrant tomorrow, you’d better believe that there would be a very good reason. That’s not a plot, it’s due process. Is there anything wrong with that?

Also, of course, since an arrest does not necessarily entail detention (unless the charge is murder or something equally serious), and since one is innocent until proven guilty, Mr Panday’s arrest, per se, would not make the slightest bit of difference to the balance of power in Parliament—though of course, it might have a negative impact on his election campaign.

But then again, no: hasn’t he already fought one election with criminal charges hanging over his head; and didn’t he do just fine? And didn’t he fight the last election soon after having lost not one, but two civil court cases? It didn’t seem to cost him any voter support. For Mr Panday, one might be forgiven for surmising, an arrest warrant at this point might even be a campaign plus. And clearly, if the Police Commissioner does not oblige, he intends to work the suggestion that there may be one for all it is worth. Conspiracies, after all, are very useful things to have around.

Of course, Mr Panday is not the only comedian on our political scene. Prime Minister Manning is turning into a regular Mr Bojangles, as he steps high and low to avoid treading in his own poop. First there was his famous phone call (we really should keep this man away from TSTT lines, don’t you think? Phones and fax machines seem to become suicide weapons when he is let loose around them).

It would take a highly skilled sword-dancer to avoid all the sharp blades Mr Manning has strewn around with his various and conflicting stories regarding that phone call. Yet suddenly, the PM is acting as if it never happened: “I’m no longer interested in that matter,” he proclaims haughtily—or words to that effect. Well, he might not be; but the rest of us still are. And we won’t necessarily forget it, just to suit him.

Hardly had that issue left the front pages, than Mr Manning finds himself tap-dancing around charges of cronyism and “ethnic cleansing” (Trinidad politicians have a genuine talent for trivialising tragedy: true “ethnic cleansing” entails state murder on a massive scale, and graves full of skeletal corpses—not firing half a dozen people from jobs they may have acquired questionably in the first place.)

Mr Manning thinks it is perfectly fine to hire unemployed ministerial spouses and longtime PNM hacks to high-paying jobs with amorphous job descriptions. Fritz Regis and Rose Janneire are the latest to step up to the trough, despite the fact that no-one seems to know what they’re supposed to be doing.

“Well, I think the two people are qualified for the jobs,” declared the Prime Minister­much the same thing he said when giving his wife a top Ministry wuk. He is no doubt correct in that assessment, since in fact the Regis and Janneire jobs did not previously exist, so qualifying for them would not have been very difficult. I would probably qualify too, if someone designed a job around me. In the PNM, it seems, “qualify” means “not be in jail”.

The rationales given by top officials for the hiring of these two patronage hacks are also amusing. Linus Rogers, chairman of the Airports Authority (Janneire’s new boss), claims that her presence will allow him “to maintain a better linkage and continuity with all facets of the airport’s operations”. Apart from making little real sense, this begs the question: what was he doing before? Snoozing?

Even better is Wasa’s assessment of Fritz Regis’ invaluable contribution. “Consumers have already started benefiting immensely from Mr Regis’ input,” declared chairman Roland Baptiste, citing the installation of communal water tanks in various parts of the country as an example of this. Have I missed something? I thought Mr Regis was hired as a security consultant; what does this have to do with water tanks? Or was Wasa not concerned with delivering water to communities before his arrival?

It gives one pause. But then again, in this amazing little country, so many things do.



Email page Send page by E-Mail