The Creeping Dictatorship That Is Trinidad

The Issues:

1. Inshan Ishmael's peaceful call for a demonstration of solidarity in respect of those who are victims of crime in Trinidad has been deliberately construed by certain quarters as an attempt to encourage civil unrest.

2. Both Inshan Ishmael's talk shows have been pulled from the air.

3. The permission granted by the San Jaun/Laventille Regional Corporation for use of the Aranguez Savannah for a mass assembly was revoked yesterday. The reason: an "oversight".

3. Police Commissioner Trevor Paul makes unsubstantiated allegations that business owners are being coerced into the demonstration by "robe wearing muslims". He then threatens the constitutional right of citizens to protest with "...the long arm of the law."

4. Inshan Ishmael is grabbed from his home at 10:00pm and taken to the Port-of-Spain Criminal Investigation Department by a troupe of unidentified heavily armed men in unmarked vehicles.


Dictatorships do not spontaneously erupt out of the ether. In our case, the "Father of the Nation", Eric Williams is responsible for its birth, while generations of dependent sycophants perpetuate its existence. Through dependency on social interventions, the abject failure of the education system to produce citizens with an acceptable level of functional literacy, much less full operational thought processes, through repeated divisions and partisan politics from Opposition Parties since the 1960s, we are where we are today.

Revisionist historians heap accolades on Dr. Eric Eustace Williams, but conveniently fail to remind us of his single-minded directive to secure political hegemony through the use of mechanistic devices perfected by the self-same Colonial Slave-masters he referred to in his doctoral work The Economic Aspect of the West Indian Slave Trade and Slavery, a thesis that borrowed heavily from inspiration he derived from C. L. R. James's The Black Jacobins (1938). Williams described Indo-Trinidadians as a, "stubborn and recalcitrant minority". It is thus that only in 1986 did the first Indo-Trinidadian become a member of Cabinet, despite the fact that Indo-Trinidadians comprise more than half the population, and comprise the economic engine of the country. At every turn, Eric Williams defied the call for an unified will to direct the evolution of Trinidad and Tobago. In 1961, he enacted the The Representation of the People Bill, without consultation, which served to allow small-islanders to enter Trinidad and vote in elections, which served to allow the partitioning of the country into constituencies to best serve the political agenda: Indo-Trinidadian communities were afforded large and few constituencies whereas African centred areas were divided into multiple small constituencies, hence using an overall imbalance in ethnic geographic distribution to favour a PNM victory. Furthermore, voting machines were introduced with the intent to swindle elections and to intimidate the Indo-Trinidadian voters by its complexity as the Indo-Trinidadian community at the time was kept in a state of relative illiteracy. The Opposition's views on the voting machines were seemingly vindicated after A. N. R. Robinson was declared the winner of the Tobago seat in the 1961 elections by securing more votes than there were registered voters. The two-thirds majority gained in the same election afforded Williams to draft the Independence Constitution without consultation from the Opposition DLP or the people.

There is no getting by the fact that The University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine Campus is ranked 2859th in the Global Academic Rankings of Universities. Mona Campus, by contradistinction, is ranked 1669, if 1669th place can be regarded as "good". Quite apart from the campus's lackluster publishing and research record is its socially apathetic student body. In all countries, infringement of civil liberties and perpetration of injustice by government regimes on its people fires up the collective University student bodies. They are fearless in their convictions, and resolute in their protests. They drive change and protect the rights of the voiceless. In a budding dictatorship, look first to the activity of the University students: if there isn't any, the future is guarded. One could be forgiven for thinking that UWI students are all autistic: apathetic, devoid of cogent understanding of relevant disparate issues, inability to develop holistic ideas and solutions based on piecemeal amalgamation of available information, involved in ego-centred repetitive self-defeatist behaviours. Gone are the days of The Black Power Movement, born out of students led by the Guild of Undergraduates at St. Augustine. Indeed it is because of the sacrifices of these citizens of yesteryear that we enjoy any semblance of a democracy today.

Fast forward to 2007. Here we have a sole social activist fighting for us all. The response? He is reviled by many, his calls ignored by the white and Syrian business bourgeoisie, he is wrongfully persecuted, incarcerated, and humiliated. Here we have the Commissioner of Police and the Police service used as a political tool to intimidate and terrorize law-abiding citizens exercising a constitutional right to protest. In a blatant abuse of power, and of process, the Police Commissioner has become nothing more than a PNM Party political goon. This comes on a backdrop of the Prime Minister announcing that he MUST secure a two-thirds majority at the next general election so that he can pass a new partisan constitution unimpeded in an act of authoritarian arrogance. History repeats itself. Shall we allow it?

- January 2007