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Don Quixote actions
January 30, 2000
Sir/Madam,
For fear of Undine’s proper English tongue-lashing, I resist the temptation to use “Curiouser and Curiouser” to describe the saga of crisis that is and isn’t.
Over the last week, the President launched a new salvo of the written word, gave two interviews to the BBC and declared his desire for apologies and indecision about talking with the local press.
Someone describing himself as the leader of the NAR (what’s that?) in Tobago called for dialogue with the PM.
Selwyn Ryan and a host of politicos struggled to decide if there was really a crisis and what its outcome would be…providing mostly useless commentary born out of years of intellectual barrenness.
And, yes, the next PM, having reshuffled his cabinet in waiting, offered a five-point plan to resolve the crisis that does or does not exist.
Well in all this profundity, what are we mortals to perceive? The President told Her Majesty’s BBC that he is defending the heads of agreement (between two political parties to form a government in 1995) and at the same time is acting purely as President.
What is he defending then? The UNC-NAR coalition is as much a figment of his imagination and that of the political leader of Tobago NAR who wasn’t party to the agreement in the first place. Poor fellas, you can’t blame them because the new interim leader of the then coalition partner has smartly lost his vociferous presence of recent vintage.
But like these people were in a coma for the last three years? The Vincent and Griffith trek across the floor (for which the PM in waiting still owes a tidy sum) effectively ended any coalition that was formed in 1995. Seventeen plus two, became seventeen plus two plus two and then left the Tobago lady now PEP and came the Tobago Dr. So for all intents and purposes it became seventeen plus two (now ex-balisier boys) plus one puppy dog (his sobriquet, not mine).
The point is there is no coalition of 1995 anymore. There is no NAR. No NAR Tobago was party to any agreement. So what is the President trying to enforce, the Tobago chieftain want to discuss and the PM in waiting suggest should be subject of dialogue between the Assembly boss and the PM in departure?
The real crisis is the failure of the former Minister extraordinaire to accept that the illusion of 1995 evaporated a long time ago.
To the thinking folk, this Don Quixote is fighting a windmill in his and his Assembly boss’ mind.
The President and the Assembly boss have begun to try and use their delusion to inflame passions about discrimination against the “small sister isle” as the President described it in his second letter.
The fact is that the agreement which they mistakenly believe still exists more than as an historical document, also created the re-created Assembly as part of a political deal, which finally also elevated the venerated Chief to the highest office in the land.
The people of Tobago and their aspiration for a free and equal union with Trinidad were scuttled on the rocks of political expediency in 1995, just as was the case with the original colonial Assembly in 1889.
The only crisis, other than that of disbelief at the de facto evaporation of the 1995 deal in the minds of President and the Assembly boss, is that the relationship between Tobago and Trinidad was not put on a proper footing by that defunct deal.
The Assembly was not given Constitutional status. In fact, the legislation is such a hodge-podge that after nearly five years, nobody has been able to reign in the mad administration that is frustrating the Tobago people and THA public employees.
This problem of the relationship between Tobago and Trinidad will not be solved if Panday appoints Senators acceptable to Charles and the President. Just as it was not solved by including NAR in 1995.
Politicians who measure success by electoral victories and dividing the spoils to feather their own nests, while collectively pursuing the same anti-national and anti-people policies dictated by moneyed interests and foreigners, are irrelevant to the creation of a free and equal union between the two islands.
Like the issue of a Constitution shaped by and facilitating a renewal of democracy in this land, the question of the union between the islands of this Republic can only be resolved by the people and their genuine political representatives of the collectives that make up the body politic of both islands.
HOMEPAGE
Copyright © Clyde Weatherhead
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