See the forest, see the trees

February 27, 2002
By Bukka Rennie

I have grave problems with all those who maintain that the present political impasse is fundamentally structural in essence, arising thereby out of our particular system of governance and therefore commissions of enquiry and financial/fiduciary audits of the management of specific affairs of State are unnecessary and a complete waste of time.

Corruption in public affairs is not an issue, they say. Let's extend the logic.

The problems of violence and maladministration in schools arise out of our education system, so that investigations into the state of affairs at specific schools that may lead to the immediate disciplining of administrators and/or pupils are in fact a waste of time because we need to change the system.

That is tantamount to seeing the forest, but never the trees.

It is all a ruse not to deal with crime at a particular level. Crime is crime and must be dealt with regardless at which level of society it occurs.

When it is white-collar crime, it is deemed to be of a structural nature, but at the lower levels of society, the very said people demand "zero tolerance" and insist that all perpetrators at this level be hunted down and snuffed out.

At this level social structure is never deemed to be failing. No wonder the leading lights of such logic are the very leading lights who do not recognise "class cleavages" in T&T.

They recognise "globalisation", which is the international deepening of capitalism, but do not recognise class cleavage, the handmaiden of capitalism, in T&T.

Funny, we are all "proletarian" they say, we all came here as "labour" but, in terms of how we are treated, it seems that some of us are "more proletarian" than others.

That is why the net of the Anaconda - code name for the new anti-crime strategy - will always encircle and choke Laventille/Morvant and other parts of the East-West Corridor, while Westmoorings and Valsayn will be left untouched. Only little fish as usual will be caught and hung out to dry.

But while the Anaconda circles the so-called "ghettoes" on the Corridor, two interesting developments take place.

Our ex-Prime Minister, ex-trade union radical and the evergreen struggler and revolutionist, pissed at having lost office, announces that he will once again take to the "battlefields", exhorting his followers to initiate civil disobedience and to stand firm in his cause to regain office.

He points out that it is their democratic rights to do so. That for sure cannot be disputed. It is even their democratic rights to be used as cannon fodder in the interest of their leader's claim to office.

He went to the Chamber of Industry and Commerce as well as the Bankers' Association seeking their assistance in the cause of breaking the political gridlock in the hope that in the least this will bring for him some sort of sharing in the holding of office.

Now we are being made aware that the commercial bankers of this country are resisting any move by the police to access information from their records pertaining to the forensic investigations of the $1.4 billion airport terminal building.

It has also been reported that police searches of the premises of Maritime Fidelity Investments and Galbaransingh's Northern Construction were blocked by order of a judge who had earlier issued warrants sanctioning the searches.

What are we to deduce from all this? What are we proletarians to do?

Should we also launch our own civil disobedience and get the Anaconda to likewise encircle the banks, the Chamber of Commerce, the EBC, etc, etc?

It is important that we reaffirm that we all have democratic rights! Is that not so?

Next week: The way out.