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By Dr. Ashford Maharaj |
January 2003: There is no doubt that Indo-Caribbean politicians are held to a higher standard than NonIndo-Caribbean politicians for the simple reason that the corridors of political power are not perceived as within their domain, by a large section of the Caribbean populace. This basic assumption is rooted in the historical antecedents, where the indentured immigrants were to reside in the rural areas, plant the land, and produce food to be sold at a cheap price to the urban masses. Within their domain also, was the owning and operating of small businesses, and to be engaged in the manual type of work. The Indo-Caribbean people were perceived to have a cultural affinity to be thrifty, wear so-called shabby clothes, and liked the "bottle." Hence, once Indo-Caribbean politicians enter the corridors of politics, especially when occupying the seat of government, the performance bar is raised to a higher standard.
The foregoing reasoning suggests how brittle the allegation of corruption ought to be for in order for it to stick on these gullible Indo-Caribbean politicians. Speaking about corruption, is like the 'coals calling the pot black.' Look around and see who are the most corrupt. When a government one appeases one particular group at the expense of another, isn't that corruption? And how about giving out contracts to the party boys and orchestrate make-work for the party faithfuls or "rum and roti" politicking. In addition, corruption cannot surface because the civil service technocrats are personnel with an affinity for the ruling party thereby being conditioned to be "hush hush" about "their" government's wrongdoing, while "their" government is in office. In fact, under the PNM corruption may have been more rampant, but whistle blowing is not practiced and "all ah we tief" is the prevailing subculture under a PNM administration.
Let us look for the evidence for corruption under the UNC. There is none, or perhaps none that is credible. All these claims about unauthorized contracts are mere allegations and that's what they are -allegations! But those allegations will stick quite quickly and easily because of the culturally determined socio-economic space allocated by historical antecedents to these newcomers to the seats of governmental power. "Opposition mentality" was the phrase coined to describe Indo-Trinidadian politicians who shared government with the "one love" party in 1986. It was further insinuated that in their heydays, the DLP was the most effective Opposition in the Caribbean with the undercurrent being that it is in the opposition benches where the "recalcitrant minority" belongs, while the seats of government are for the so-called nationalist of the Williams' tradition.
So Panday and company had to be circumspect as they were in alien occupations. The cards were stacked against them and whereas, in the 2000 election performance was deemed a major plus, they couldn't escape the corruption myth in 2002. Apart from the smoke screen of corruption and the witch-hunt that resulted in concocted charges before the courts, these charges, as expected, were dismissed in these very courts. But in any event, the corruption stigma, though unfounded, seemed to have worked. And that was all that mattered.
The examples cited here are equally applicable to the Guyanese situation as well. And while this article does not offer solutions to the problems identified, it clearly seeks to recognize some of the root causes that can help explain the calamity of Indo-Caribbean politicians in government. The "hell" that is being unleashed on the peaceful Guyanese people are no doubt motivated by the fact that some sections of that community is of the opinion that they should be in the government by decree, given that they were in that country before these plebeians of indentured immigrants.
On the issue of corruption, Transparency International, the creditable world watchdog on global corruption, found that Trinidad & Tobago was the least corrupt among all the Caribbean countries. The scale used by the Transparency International is from 1 to 10 where 10 are the absence of corruption and 0 absolutely corrupted country. This credible survey internationally recognized corruption monitoring body, in its 2002 report, gave Trinidad & Tobago 4.9 with a ranked of 33. Finland scored the highest with 9.7 while the United States scored 7.7 and ranked of 16, among the 102 countries surveyed. Jamaica scored 4.0 and was ranked 45th while Bangladesh and Nigeria scored the lowest, 1.2 and 1.6 respectively making them the most corrupt among the countries examined for the 2002 report. As one would expect, no country scored a perfect 10, nor did any one of them was given a score of zero.
Even though the findings show T&T holding its own in terms of being relatively clean, then why was the issue of corruption stuck so tightly on the UNC? Again my postulation is that the cultural bias to people of East Indian descent entering a relatively novel domain of the corridors of political power. The cliché that "Indians like money" really meaning their thriftiness and an above average acumen for conducting business, was easy to catch on among a conditionally biased non-Indian and urban electorate. Indo-Caribbean politicians must come to the conscious realization that the bar is set at a higher level for them and that funds for their political causes must be channeled through the official channels of the party and not through one person, no matter how charismatic that person may be. In closing, congratulations are in order for Vishnu Bisram and the NACTA group for another relatively accurate polling in Trinidad & Tobago under unequivocal conditions.