Moving towards healing

THE MOST recent wave were post-election rants: uncomfortable, often appalling statements by pro-UNC activists angry at the PNM’s success at the polls that were met by savage retorts from pro-PNM voices.

On Thursday morning, Archbishop of Port of Spain Jason Gordon warned that the country is on a “dangerous path,” on the evidence of racially charged posts on social media.

He was joined in his concerns by SWAHA pundit Hardeo Persad, who warned, “Where there is disunity, there is no end to the negativity and things fall apart.”

Imam Maulana Atif Majeed called on tribes and communities “not to discriminate against each other, but to know each other.”

The Emancipation Support Committee, on its Facebook page, condemned the statements and urged the public to “revisit the lessons which taught the principled path to achieving harmony in diversity.” It was important for all these things to be said. But the differences between sectors of TT society have become more pronounced in recent years, with the implied endorsement of the leadership of both major parties.

For every “blank man” there has been a “Calcutta ship” that incites anger and divisiveness among citizens who seem to favour at least the appearance of harmony and calm when left to their own devices.

Leadership in politics cannot simply be about charting an economic course and managing resources; it must also engage a responsibility to lead by example. In Parliament and elsewhere, statesmanship has been scarce among our elected officials.

It didn’t help when Police Commissioner Gary Griffith doubled down on his description of murderous criminals as “cockroaches” at the police press conference on Thursday.

Mr Griffith seemed to be able to make a nuanced difference in his use of the term, compared to Naila Ramsaran’s application of it, but it remains a slur that gives the uncivil an opportunity to dehumanise another person.

Nothing good can come from that.

There is a deep irony in the leaders of 2020 relying on the divisive strategies of race that colonial authorities used to keep indentured labourers and the formerly enslaved from finding shared purpose.

The election largely avoided critical topical issues to engage with blame and slur and regurgitated accusations to motivate voters.

Politicians should be shamed by a voter turnout this year that was the lowest recorded by percentage of voting age population since 1981.

The only sensible path forward from this nadir in local race relations is for our leaders to choose to take the high ground and to establish areas of commonality. They must demonstrate to the people of this country that it is possible to disagree while putting the progress and advancement of the national community above everything else.