Waiting for Giuliani

By Bukka Rennie
December 24, 2003

I have never forgotten my deceased aunt, one of my favourite people, smooth and jet black with dimpled cheeks, one who laughed with a richness that would make anyone's day. And there was this certain twinkle in her eyes that drew people to her, that made people feel comfortable, appreciated and loved unconditionally. She was indeed a human being.

She went to England on vacation and when she returned she whispered to me almost in conspiratorial tones, expressing how appalled she had been to see "these big white-men sweeping the streets in London." Tears, she confessed to me, had come to her eyes as she looked on at "these big white-men."

Back then in those heady days of the '70s, only she could have gotten away telling me such the like. I knew her heart, that's why. So I simply responded by asking: "Tanty, whom did you expect would be sweeping the streets of London, if not white people?"

She had no choice but to acquiesce to that line of logical reasoning. But have we ever stopped to ponder on why a whole generation of Caribbean people never made reference to white-men without the preceding adjective, "big"? Language, indeed, tells us so much.

That is why I reject outright all those semi-idiots who are quick to suggest that African descendants in the Western Hemisphere particularly need not concern themselves with the legacy of slavery, when we are yet to seriously plumb the depths of the effects and results of that 500 years of victimhood and even moreso the ongoing psychological entanglements of colonialism and neo-colonialism.

Today we, ex-slaves, ex-indentureds, and ex-colonials all, are still waiting for yet another "big white-man" from abroad, "from foreign", this time it's Giuliani. Seeking validation yet again, as Best is wont to put it.

Every single problem that confronts us, that engages us, somehow always seem to require or necessitate foreign intelligence. We keep deluding ourselves that someone, outside of ourselves, possess answers that are beyond us.

One can recall that most classic case of the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA), when under the late Morris Marshall a local team of managers was put in place with the promise that financial support would be forthcoming. That support never came.

The then Minister of Finance, Mottley, claimed there was no money to inject into WASA, yet the support came later when foreign management consultants, Severn Trent, was brought in and given carte-blanche authorisation to access unlimited funds.

They came, used the data compiled by local professionals, introduced absolutely nothing new, nothing creative, but spent money and had a ball. It happens over and over.

The local professionals will tell you that there is always some silly PS (Permanent Secretary) or A04 (Administrative Office 4) that will question either their credentials, their track-record or maybe their billings, if it ever happens to reach that far, but foreign consultants are never given such treatment.

Lock-Joint came and put down a sewer system - from Laventille to Mount Hope - they had never done before then any such work and it may have been their very last because nothing has been heard of them since.

No wonder foreign consultants trip over each other to pick up contracts in parts of the world such as T&T. They make a lot of money, most times under false pretences, but most of all these escapades certainly look good on their CVs.

It is now a known fact that over drinks they ask each other: "So where did you get your Third World experience?"

So yet another came! And what did Giuliani have to say? He said if you wish to minimise crime, you first have to establish a management structure with clearly defined areas of responsibility and a chain of command with each person being responsible and accountable to the next ahead in the chain, and that the management must be invested with the power and authority and the teeth to make decisions and to hire and fire.

So what's new? Everybody here knows that. But everybody here also knows that we are unable to implement anything, forcefully and expeditiously, because we are incapable of uniting and mobilising to implement given our peculiar history.

When the fathers of our nation sat down at Malborough House to negotiate our Independence, the two leaders, Williams and Capildeo, mindful of the significance of the moment, knew they had to allay the fears, imagined or real, of the people they led.

The agreement at Malborough to establish commissions - the Civil Service Commission, the Police Service Commission, the Teaching Service Commission and so on - was geared to guarantee that the actual running of the country and certain significant jobs would be insulated and be free from the interference of the political directorate.

The words of Capildeo at the first sitting of Parliament on August 31, 1962, indicates how deep-seated were the fears: "...Democracy contains the germs of its own destruction and tyranny can enshrine itself on the altar of popular rule... every such dedication (to parliamentary democracy) is a barrier which evil minds will have to surmount in order to advance into totalitarian powers..."

Giuliani will soon find out, if he returns here to deal with the crime situation, that no policeman can be summarily fired without the constituted independent deliberations of the Police Service Commission. Even the manager of the Police Service, ie the COP, is hired by the commission after consultation with the Prime Minister.

Out of fear for the future we constitutionally tied the hands of our Executive. The result has been a form of social constipation, a culture of non-performance in regard to expeditious implementation.

Everyone expresses concern for the deteriorating crime situation. Everyone says that the solutions have to be holistic. Everyone expresses the desire to want to help eradicate the crime problem. Laventille has been identified as a key hot-spot.

One key project in Laventille has so far been identified as part of the holistic approach - the old, burnt-out Rum Bond is to be transformed into a Laventille Institute of Technology.

The decision has been made, that was the easy part, but now we have to await implementation. Look, why can we not march thousands of Laventille people onto that site and build the damn thing inside of two months. What a joy that would be.

Last week's column dealt with developments in China. The Chinese have become famous for transforming huge areas of swamp, or what have you, into modern industrial centres within a couple years.

I can recall Eugenio Moore, then adviser to Williams, talking about seeing thousands of Cubans going down to a site and building a gigantic bridge in a matter of days, and how much that experience had turned around his whole sense of socio-economic development. Why can't we?

We keep talking about building the domestic home or inshore economy by way of the establishing of small and medium manufacturing enterprises, and so minimise our dependency on oil and gas. Then why don't we outline an industrial policy, send the right signals out to all and sundry and just build the manufacturing enterprises.

Why are we afraid of mass mobilisations of the people to implement policy? Why do we keep awaiting big white-men like Giuliani?

This year was our 41st anniversary of Independence and we are yet to begin to think differently and divergently. The shackles on our minds are still intact.

Williams, one of our founding fathers, said back in 1962 that we were in fact a "society" but not yet a "nation". And we were left to contemplate on what it takes to make a society, any society, a nation.

Was the key to being a nation the coming to the fore of responsible self-government that would knock desperate and disparate hostile groups thrown together by acts of fate into a cohesive whole with a mandated mission for modern development?

Could there be nationhood without proper rites of passage for manhood and womanhood? Shouldn't we be mobilising people around specific activity from which they can begin to see the world in a different light and begin to engage themselves in new ways?

Frantz Fanon exposed for us "the pitfalls of national consciousness," confined as it were to a mere sense of geography and external trappings, like flag and anthem and borrowed constitution, but devoid of genuine human transformation to develop the confidence of people to act on their own behalf.

The process must start and end with people. Or we will ever be seeing "big white-men" and waiting for the Giulianis of this world.