Tony DeyalTELEVISION, WHICH is called a medium because so little of it is well done, came to Trinidad and Tobago in 1962, the year of our Independence. On an early television programme, a talent-show host on Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT) asked one of the contestants, "Where you from?" The man replied, "Tobago." At that time, two political firebrands, A.N.R. Robinson and Winston Murray, were preaching secession for Tobago from Trinidad. The talk-show host then said with mock annoyance, "I hope you not coming with any of this secession stupidness here tonight. Anyhow, what song you singing for us?" The man from Tobago replied grimly, Release me.
Engelbert Humperdinck and Trinidad and Tobago have survived the 40 years, each in its own inimitable style. While Humperdinck still has the reputation of being able to sing you to sleep after the loving, releasing you so to speak, Trinidad and Tobago can drive you to tears of joy and sorrow with its contradictions, controversies and general contrariness.
On Wednesday a fasting man was given a book to read. The book's title is Inward Hunger! However, the man is on a daylight 'fast,' a Trinidadian compromise between fasting and feasting, or a slow fast. He sits in front of the Rienzi Complex, home of the trade union led by Basdeo Panday, and headquarters of his political party, the United National Congress (UNC). Many years ago the same building was the site of a consumer goods store run by the union. When the workers got their back-pay, a cane cutter was persuaded by one of the union's sales-persons to buy a video player. The man did not own a television set. Also, he did not have electricity in his village.
The slow 'faster' is seeking to have all the opposition political parties unite. He belongs to the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), the party that was formed by A.N.R. Robinson, Karl Hudson Phillips, and Basdeo Panday in 1986 to defeat the People's National Movement (PNM). The PNM's founder and author of Inward Hunger, was Dr. Eric Williams, first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. In the book, Dr. Williams confessed that his family was so poor that his mother had to make pies and suchlike to sell. Their maid would carry the basket with the goods for sale and he would walk in front of her to collect the money. Dr. Williams made it clear that he did not want money, monuments or other tributes on his death. Last week, just after elections were announced, Dr. Williams was posthumously awarded the Trinity Cross, the highest accolade Trinidad and Tobago can bestow on its citizens. Just before the 1986 elections, the PNM government of the time had named a hospital complex after Dr. Williams, as well as a mid-town plaza. The PNM then lost that election.
The award itself, the Trinity Cross, is being criticised by several of our non-Christian religious groups. Critics of the Cross have said crossly that the name 'Trinity' heaped upon a cross is Christian in connotation and context and leaves out other religions. The present Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, said he would consider changing the name. Shortly afterwards, he agreed that the wishes of Dr. Williams would be defied and that Williams should get a Trinity Cross. Mr. Manning, whose campaign platform included promises of ending the nepotism practised by the Panday regime, subsequently upon becoming Prime Minister made his wife Minister of Education. One cynical friend of mine, who was associated with the Williams regime, said this is just one more cross that poor Eric has to bear.
He reminded me of the joke about a Williams' supporter going to Heaven and asking St. Peter where he could find his former leader. "What was his name?" St. Peter asked. The man replied, "Eric but we called him Bill." St. Peter said impatiently, "You know how many millions of Bills we have here? Is there anything else that would help me to locate him for you?" "Well," the man replied, "he said if they named anything after him or gave him any honours he would turn over in his grave." St Peter laughed in triumph, "You mean Revolving Bill!" This is also a typical Trini contradiction since Dr. Williams was cremated and not buried.
After the death of Dr. Williams, his successor George Chambers complained about Trinidadian contrariness, "They put all this pressure on you, saying if it was Dr. Williams he would have done this or that. And then when you act like Dr. Williams they ask, 'Who he think he is, trying to behave like Dr. Williams?' You just can't win."
A.N.R. Robinson the first political leader of the original NAR followed Mr. Chambers as Prime Minister. It is ironic that a secessionist is now President, pledged to the unity of Trinidad and Tobago. He has slowed down and his speech is slurred. However, he has filed a lawsuit against Mr. Panday for a racial slur. Panday, who only slurs sometimes, is trying to slow down enquiries into a bank account or accounts in England, which at first he said he knew nothing about and now says he does not have. Another founder of the NAR, Mr. Karl Hudson Phillips, an Attorney-General under Dr. Eric Williams, is helping the PNM enquire into such contradictions as Mr. Panday's on-again, off-again bank accounts and his accounts of his accounts which are really his wife's, and other puzzling phenomena, including how his wife, Oma, could amass such great wealth without his knowledge.
Meanwhile, an argument has broken out about who really raised the Independence Flag on August 31, 1962. A TTT newsroom manager claimed the Government was trying to censor the news. A former independent Senator and former Chairman of TTT is saying that Dr. Williams erred when he said that the future is in the book-bags of our young people. In the meantime, because of the non-delivery of a $1,000 grant promised by the Manning Government, many kids have neither books nor book-bags.
Tony Deyal was last seen talking about the contradiction that was so contradictory it turned out to be true. Once, when asked whether joining the NAR was a marriage of convenience, Mr. Panday countered, "Isn't every marriage a marriage of convenience?"
