A way of seeing

By Bukka Rennie
October 15, 2003

It is always important to make certain essential connections and linkages if we are to understand the process and genesis of how phenomena develop, how things change and how social transformation comes about.

For example, everyone waited to hear what measures to combat crime the Government would introduce in the course of presenting its Budget for 2004. Since then everyone has been concentrating on the merits or demerits of the proposed administrative measure to establish a new crime-fighting unit headed by some hurriedly promoted brigadier of the army. Nothing new.

Army and police jointly have been used to combat crime for quite some time. Army intelligence units have always been rated as more sophisticated and efficient that similar units of the police. This is what has been alleged.

In this place it is always difficult to separate rumour from reality, since evidence is never presented to prove or disprove assumptions that somehow or the other come to gain public currency. It is that public currency which is merely being exploited here: "the army badder than the police..."

Whether the Commissioner of Police will be in command of this brigadier or vice-versa, or whether they will equally share the space at the top of the crime-fighting hierarchy is left to be seen. However what we know from history is that administrative measures never have far-reaching effect in dealing with social problems. Social problems are, in the long run, only solved by social measures. In the mean, palliatives, administrative and fiscal measures, are applied.

The measure on which I thought everyone would focus is the proposed tax relief for business people who are currently faced by necessity with heavily increased security expenditure. What is to be the extent of this tax relief? On what basis is it to be calculated? Will it apply only to the employment of human resource or as well to the increased use of electronics?

As a business person myself whose business place has been robbed over a dozen times and who has had to face guns in the hands of very young bandits, this measure is indeed quite appealing. Many business people just could not afford armed security personnel, so many settled for cheap electronic buzzers.

With this tax relief, business people will go for armed personnel which, in turn, will impact positively on the unemployment levels. Any increase in gainful employment will serve to transform behaviour and result in a decrease of crime levels.

The point is that each measure we seek to introduce must by various streams of linkages redound to social transformation and change. That is the way of seeing that must predominate.

The last five columns dealt with constitution reform, moreso the process and genesis of constitutional change. There have been responses to those columns that range from the idealistic and simplistic to the lunatic. We can look at an example from either extreme.

One person, Chrisendath Mahadeo, wrote the following: "Write about how your race is demanding superiority over all others here and upsetting the delicate racial balance. Who the hell cares about the Magna Carta? Brenco, you are living in the past and like Sugar Aloes and the rest of the PNM aristocracy - racist to the bone..."

The horror of a twisted mind. How can anyone deduce such from reading columns that trace the genesis of constitutions, that elucidate how the people at the bottom of society have struggled to enhance their existence by seeking at each stage further and more advance human and civil rights and how all branches of humanity, wherever they may be, benefited from such efforts and endeavours?

What this lunatic fringe indicates is how certain people here can be so blinded by the considerations of ethnic and racial mobilisations that they are unable to see the big picture.

In plural societies there will always be a process that involves contesting for space and pride of place by the various social groupings inhabiting the environment. In this context history has shown us that nothing is gained through imposition, force or coercion.

There is a flow and an intermingling, a cross-fertilisation, that takes place as a matter of course. That nurturing and fertilising is a most natural process, and is best and first exhibited by the manifestations of art and the artists, the foremost visionaries. Long before it comes to be intertwined and embraced by the socio-economic and political processes.

What is crucial is the adopting of this particular way of seeing that serves to unleash the politics. The most powerful phenomena in our existence today in T&T are the things that have not been imposed and which are the very things that set us apart from everybody and everywhere else.

Derren Joseph, on the other hand, writes: "...Thank you for so clearly articulating the issues that underlie this debate. Best does try, but for whatever reasons, it comes across as if his mission is to impress rather than communicate. You, however, 'appear' to be pointing to the same issues by highlighting the historical context but in such a clear and logical way. Please keep up the good work..."

I wish to disagree unequivocally with that view of Lloyd Best's work. In fact, it is Best more than any other who forced this society to recognise that what we operate here is not the Westminster system.

Form is one thing, content is another. For years, Best painfully articulated that the form in outward appearance may be Westminster but the content is pure, unadulterated governorship. And he has gone on over the years to examine in practical terms the relationships that exist between all the institutions that have been constituted here to in fact indicate how in each case, without any exemptions, everything redounds to the power of the Executive, the power that is embodied by one person - the Prime Minister.

The question to be answered is: how can power be reconstituted to be placed where it in fact should rest - in the hands of the people as a whole? Regardless of our differences in strategy and tactics, Best must be complimented for posing the searching questions and the "historical context" fearlessly.

The main point, however, that has been made by the last five columns on constitution reform is that historically it was the natural intertwining of the struggles within the production process with the political struggles for enfranchisement and greater democracy that fuelled the reforms and social change. It is no different today.

At the end of the last column the question was posed: "In T&T we know that we have to build the in-shore industrial/manufacturing sector into a sustainable integrated home economy. How is this to be reflected in constitution reform...?"

As a matter of fact that, the building of a sustainable home economy, should be the key purpose of all budgets, all major expenditure, in T&T of today. And once we go there, the question of who is to decide and our national sovereignty emerge as the spinal factor.