The Lotus of Trinidad and Tobago: Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Fifty-nine year-old Kamla Persad-Bissessar swept to power on May 24th in Trinidad and Tobago in a historic election rearranging the balance of power in that country forever. In a country riven by racial tensions (40% of the population is of Indian origin and about 37% of African descent), where the latter group has dominated the political life of the nation this Indo-Trinidadian woman campaigned and won on a platform of multi-racialism and the promise of change. Her win was decisive, the coalition she led winning 29 parliamentary seats out of 41. The ruling party, headed by former Prime Minister Manning only managed to win 12 seats compared to the 26 it had previously held.


Persad-Bissessar, with Basdeo Panday in the background

The 24th day of the month has proved to be a lucky one for Persad-Bissessar. It was only three months earlier that she bruisingly defeated Basdeo Panday, nicknamed the Silver Fox, the leader of the United National Congress, a party affiliated with Indian interests. On February 24th of this year Kamla Persad-Bissessar was elected political leader of the UNC and on March 24th she became Leader of the Opposition. On May 26th Persad-Bissessar was sworn in as Prime Minister on the Bhagavad Gita, a symbolically important act in this multiethnic society.

Though born into a Trinidadian Hindu family, at the age of 12 Kamla was baptized a Christian, making her, like many others in this fascinating island, a ‘Hindu Christian,’ that is, someone who is culturally Hindu who has also adopted the Christian religion for reasons of her own. After and during indentureship many Hindus in Trinidad and Tobago had to convert to Christianity to access education and other such benefits.

“I think Trinidadians are very comfortable with being bi-religious,” says Toronto-based sociologist Anton Allahar. “They see Hinduism more as a culture and less as a religion. Once you accept the central tenets of Christianity you could perform Pujas and other Hindu rituals and it wouldn’t be a problem.”

According to Trinidadian pollster Selwyn Ryan, Kamla Persad-Bissessar is ‘multi-faith’. She became a member of the Baptist Church at age 12 and her husband is Presbyterian, but she is a Hindu. “I consider myself a member of all faiths” she is reputed to have said. Ryan, an Afro-Trinidadian, previously a staunch PNM supporter and adviser, is now firmly in Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s camp as are many other stalwarts of that party.

In many ways Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s political campaign can be compared to that of President Barrack Obama’s. Her embodiment of different cultures, her ability to command the respect of all different ethnic groups and her argument against the old politics of divisiveness all stood her in good stead. Her personal charisma and well-maintained figure also did her no harm.

“In the 1980s I wrote a paper called ‘The Creolization of Indian Women’” said Patricia Mohammed, a leading authority on Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Trinidad. “I was talking about the way in which Indian women in Trinidad have turned the very weaknesses associated with them--submissiveness, subservience--into strengths.” According to Mohammed submissiveness is turned into endurance, passivity becomes a talent for negotiation and these married with intelligence, the product of their investment in education, can prove to be an unbeatable combination. “So what i see with Kamla Persad-Bissessar is a coming of age, to use a cliche, and to reduce her victory only to ‘the woman thing’ is to deny the importance of race and how important this has been for Indians here and Indian women in particular.”

Race and ethnicity may not have the same sway they have traditionally had, especially with the younger electorate, according to Gabrielle Hosein, a young lecturer and activist also from the Gender Studies Department at UWI. This may explain why traditional party loyalists were willing to switch their vote at the last minute to the UNC-COP coalition that Kamla Persad-Bissessar represented.

Crucial to her victory, according to Hosein, was the support of the COP, the Congress of the People, an influential group representing a diverse range of interests across race, ethnicity and even class. “If you went to COP meetings you saw working class people, both Africans and Indians who may have been fed up of both the PNM and the UNC. The COP was a palatable alternative. In my mind they gave a lot of validity to the UNC and allowed them to become the national party that they would never have been otherwise.”

Panday’s decisive defeat at the hands of Kamla Persad-Bissessar as leader of the UNC may also have played a role. “She fought an excellent campaign. It was so clean. Basdeo Panday was busy bad-talking her saying she was a drunkard, she couldn’t lead, how incompetent she was and she systematically praised him, saying he was her guru and she was his disciple...she ran the cleanest campaign. I was so proud of her.”

Despite her evident enthusiasm for Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Hosein, who is author of an outspokenly critical video blog called “If I Were Prime Minister” in which she had mercilessly parodied the mismanagement of the previous administration, says she will continue her vigilant monitoring of the new leadership. “I’m actually looking forward to making fun of Kamla because i think the blog is a no-holds barred statement of what we see that’s wrong around us and the need to fix those things.


If I Were Prime Minister, video blog by Gabrielle Hosein

“The blogs are not going to stop because what we’re called on now to do as social movements, and activists and citizens is to be hyper-vigilant because neither the UNC and the PNM--in fact no political part--is free from corruption, they all need to be held to account. I think the population needs to follow up on the vote by being active citizens and monitoring the processes of governance. I think the more people on the ground who are questioning and making demands of Kamla, the easier it will be for her to govern.”

PS: This piece was originally written for The Pioneer in India, which carried an edited version of it in May. In light of PM Persad-Bissessar's visit to Jamaica to attend the CARICOM Summit i thought it might be worth reproducing here.

Trouble in Paradise: A Picture called Death?

First magazine, the innovative, streetwise, fashion-conscious chronicle of 'modern life in Jamaica' is back in multimedia form this time. The video below in which photographer Biggy Bigz talks about his iconic photo "A Picture called Death' is making the rounds right now and is presented below for your viewing pleasure.

First People: Marlon 'Biggy Bigz' Reid from First on Vimeo.

March 24, 2008. La Roose, Port Henderson. Photos by Biggy Bigz.

The region's dysfunctionality so memorably captured in snapshot form by Marlon 'Biggy Bigz' Reid has caught the attention of the international media. The link between organized crime and Caribbean states is suddenly coming in for close scrutiny. Perhaps the local media is too paralysed by fear to produce such hard-hitting news stories but last week the conservative journal, Foreign Policy, carried an article on Trinidad and Tobago called Trouble in Paradise, labeling it the newest narcostate in the world'. The paragraph below is excerpted from that article:'

... unfortunately, the Port of Spain government helps stoke the drug trade and the gangs. The country's annual per capita GDP has risen from about $11,000 to $18,800 in the past decade due to strong exports of natural gas and steel. Still, unemployment remains high, and to create jobs, the government spends about $400 million per year on make-work projects. The bulk of this money is ultimately funneled to gang leaders, who administer "grants" and distribute "salaries." Indeed, corruption -- always a problem in the country -- is reaching new heights. According to several security analysts, a damning unofficial study carried out by the government in 2009 suggested that almost 90 percent of police officers were regularly involved in illegal activities. Those pursuits ranged from running and selling drugs, to colluding with gangs by renting out weapons to criminals, to performing extralegal killings.

Clovis, Jamaica Observer, March 11 2010

Meanwhile back home in Jamdown the country's recent equivocation over the extradition request from the United States regarding Christopher “Dudus” Coke has attracted the attention of the Economist magazine. In a Mar 11th 2010 article titled "Seeking Mr Coke" the Economist described "American anger at Jamaica’s slowness in handing over an alleged gang boss":

The American authorities have become frustrated at what they see as foot-dragging by Jamaica’s government over their request last August for the extradition of a man they say is the leader of an “international criminal organisation”.

A “Gang Threat Assessment Survey” conducted by the Jamaican government last year reckoned there were 268 criminal groups in Jamaica, earning cash from extortion, selling cannabis, transporting cocaine, contract killings, prostitution and international cybercrime. Many of them are merely small-time thugs. But the United States Justice Department has put Mr Coke on its “world’s most dangerous” list, accusing him of directing drug deals as far away as New York.

Mr Coke’s home patch is Tivoli Gardens, a tough inner-city garrison close to the waterfront. It is the core of the Kingston Western parliamentary seat, held since 2005 by the prime minister, Bruce Golding, and for 43 years before that by Eddie Seaga, his predecessor as leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

...The State Department’s annual narcotics report, published on March 1st, talks of a “dramatic change” from earlier co-operation on extradition. It says Mr Coke has “reported ties” to the ruling party and that the delay in extraditing him “highlights the potential depth of corruption in the government.” Although the report acknowledges that a police anti-graft squad has made progress in catching crooked policemen and officials, it says some gang bosses enjoy police and political protection.

Clovis, Jamaica Observer, March 2010

As long as this state of affairs continues dramatic scenes like the one captured by photographer Marlon Reid at the top of this post will soon become commonplace. We seem to be slowly but surely heading in the direction of places like Cali and Medellin in Colombia. How to extricate ourselves from such a fate is not at all clear. Ideas anyone?

Let us Prey! The flight of Calder Hart from Trinidad and Tobago

Cobo Town: Cat in Bag Productions' 2010 mas presentation, designed by artists Ashraph and Shalini Seereeram. Let us prey!

I'm quite fascinated by the goings on in Trinidad and Tobago over the last couple of days. The Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (UDeCOTT) boss Calder Hart has resigned and fled the country. Surely this is a 9.0 magnitude political earthquake for the Manning Government. I'd like to see how the ruling party extricates itself from what appears to be damning evidence of guilt: the sudden, hasty departure of one of the major players accused of corruption. "AT LAST!" blared a headline on Newsday's cover page, referring to Calder's resignation. The lead article by Andre Bagoo titled "Hart resigns"started off like this:

ALMOST two years after allegations of corruption were first made against him, Calder Hart yesterday resigned as the Udecott executive chairman and as the chairman of four other state boards he had been appointed to under Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s administration.

...His resignation came after Newsday last week published a series of documents which appeared to disclose clear links between his wife, Malaysian born Sherrine Hart, and a company the Udecott board awarded $820 million in contracts to. The documents, birth and marriage certificates tying Sherrine to two men who served as directors on Sunway Construction Caribbean Limited, emerged after being obtained by the Congress of the People in the course of a six-week investigation.

Hart’s resignation also came one day after High Court Judge Justice Mira Dean-Armorer shot down an attempt by lawyers acting on behalf of Udecott to stop the submission of the final report of the Uff Commission of Inquiry. The judge rejected Udecott’s arguments that the inquiry, which saw damning evidence of corruption and mismanagement emerge, was illegal.

Calder Hart was no ordinary Trinidadian. The following paragraphs were taken from his Witness Statement to the Commission of Enquiry Into the Construction Industry.

1. My name is Calder Hart. I live at No. 6 De Lima Road, Cascade, Trinidad and Tobago. I was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada. I have lived in Trinidad and Tobago for the last 22 years and in 2004 I applied for and was granted citizenship of Trinidad & Tobago. To do so I was not required to renounce Canadian citizenship and as a consequence I am now a citizen of both Canada and Trinidad and Tobago.
2. As can be seen from my curriculum vitae attached below (annexure 2) before I first came to Trinidad and Tobago in 1986, I had acquired considerable work experience in the areas of housing (both private and public), mortgage financing, land assembly and urban development and redevelopment at both federal and provincial levels.

The news of Hart's resignation and abrupt departure from the country drew loud and raucous responses from the blogosphere.

"The flight of Cobo Hart: naturally my Carnival placard helped turn the tide!: http://bit.ly/cmUG6m" Nicholas Laughlin announced on Twitter, the link leading to his blogpost excerpted below:

SUNDAY, MARCH 07, 2010

The flight of the cobo



My Carnival Monday placard from the band Cobo Town, proudly carried through the streets of Port of Spain nearly three weeks ago. The face of Calder “Cobo” Hart — head of the powerful state construction agency Udecott, widely suspected of massive financial improprieties and thought by some to be Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s bagman, subject of investigation by the Uff commission of enquiry — replaced the national coat of arms in the middle of a giant $100 bill. Read the rest of Nicholas's blog here:

Now the interesting thing is that i had arrived in TnT on the 20th of February just in time to be taken to the victory party of the Cobo ('corbeau' the equivalent of our John Crows) Town band (fourth place in the small band category at Trini carnival). I was transported from the airport to artist Ashraph's frame shop in one fell swoop, where the erstwhile Cobos were flinging wine and sundry spicy snacks down their beaks.

artist Ashraph Ramsaran, leading the Cobo Town Band, seen above descending on Red House (House of Parliament)

One of them detached himself and introduced himself as Andre Bagoo, the author of the article quoted above and parliamentary reporter who was in the news only a few months ago. We had been following each other on Twitter and Facebook for some time but had never met in person. Bagoo is also author of the blog Pleasure (Art in all its forms) and had been banned from Parliament in TnT last November "for the rest of the session" on grounds of 'contempt'. Coincidentally, as a Trinidad Express story said:

The article written by Bagoo arose out of a report stating that the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago, which had been referred to the Privileges Committee for alleged contempt arising out of a complaint made by Caroni East MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh, had planned to concede on the contempt charge and had decided to issue an apology.

A Cobo Town placard

Bagoo was not the only one so hastily dispatched. Former Trade Minister Diego Martin West MP Dr Keith Rowley was fired under mysterious circumstances. Rowley had called for Cabinet oversight of Udecott and accountability. And that's not all. In the March 8th edition of Newsday Bagoo states: "BEFORE CALDER Hart resigned as executive chairman in the wake of documents showing links between Hart and a company the Udecott board awarded $820 million in contracts, the Prime Minister Patrick Manning and Cabinet defended Hart and Udecott no less than forty-five times over the course of two years, all the while apparently taking no action to deal with allegations against Hart.

And they claimed Panday was corrupt! One of the funniest, most effective pieces of satire in the Caribbean Blogosphere is a blog calling itself "The Secret Blog of Patrick “Patos” Manning". The voice is ostensibly that of Manning:

Breakfast of losers

March 7th, 2010 · No Comments

Mealtime at a Commonwealth heads of government event is never pretty. You’d swear some of these characters have only recently learned to eat with knife and fork, and I’m not talking just about the South Asian and Sub-Saharan African delegates. For instance, it’s well known in Commonwealth heads circles that the person you never want sitting across the table from you isGordon Brown, who, in addition to having the table manners of a warahoon, insists of having a serving of haggis with every single meal. Experienced heads like me know that the thing to do is arrive at the dining room well ahead of time and choose the smallest table possible, which also limits your chances of having to sit near a type like Jacob Zuma.

But even an experienced head like me sometimes oversleeps. Thanks to a combination of jetlag, a not completely guilt-free conscience and a nightmare featuring a horrifying creature with the upper body of Calder Hart and the hindquarters of the Rev Apostle Juliana Peña, I didn’t manage to roll out of bed this morning until well after 8am BST. Hazel was already awake, talking on the phone in hushed tones. She said that she too had lost track of time and planned to skip breakfusses, which didn’t quite explain why she was already fully dressed, nor the general whiff of bacon and sausages about her person. I considered ordering room service, but in heads circles not showing up for a meal when you’re embroiled in a scandal is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Even Mugabe was still eating among us till the bitter end, much to everyone’s chagrin.

What i love about Trinidad is the freewheeling creativity to be found there as evidenced in the blog above and also in recent developments in Carnival. The riotous street festival which many feel has been hijacked by 'bikini mas' in recent years, is being reclaimed by a small band of politically and socially conscious revellers. A motley crew of artists, writers, fashionistas and techies this group has demonstrated what true creativity is, for two years running. Last year the band performed T'in Cow, Fat Cow, a commentary on the voicelessness of ordinary citizens. This year they performed as vultures, the birds of prey known as Cobos in Trinidad and John Crows in Jamaica.

Arriving back in Trinidad after my art appointment in Suriname i found myself riding in a taxi past the Labasse, the giant garbage dump across from Laventille. The sky was filled with circling cobos but what has truly stayed with me is the sight of 40 or 50 cobos sitting on the ground, striking birds of intense blackness, waiting their turn at the carrion. In the wake of the flight of Cobo Calder Hart and the unveiling of the depth of corruption in the governance procedures of the country, Cobo Town emerges as the stinging critical intervention it was meant to be. This is a kind of popular action that is definitely not happening in Jamaica.

In 2009 Ashraph and Shalini debuted an independent mas band of artists and 'creatives' called T’in Cow Fat Cow with the theme 'The People Must be Herd". The photos below show their strikingly simple, immensely creative costumes. Below the photos i've cut and pasted their manifesto which was clearly designed to extend itself to political protest from being a mere mas band.

One looks in vain for anything remotely similar in Jamaica both in terms of sheer conceptual creativity and as political mobilization. I eagerly await the next installment of Gab Hossein's hard-hitting video blog called "If I Were Prime Minister..." in which she mercilessly lampoons and takes down the political directorate of TnT about the absurdities that pass for governance. What will she have to say about the Hart resignation and the latest shenanigans?. One waits with bated breath.

Photo: Georgia Popplewell

On Thursday 16 April, as final preparations are being made for the staging of the 5th Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, a group of artists will do a performance installation on the streets of Trinidad and Tobago's capital, Port of Spain.

The silent procession is part of a video installation being created by the band’s designers Ashraph Ramsaran and Shalini Seereeram.

T’in Cow Fat Cow debuted as an independent mas band in 2009, inspired by the song T'in Cow by 3 Canal.

The procession takes place on the streets of Port of Spain between 9 and 11 and started at that traditional seat of people’s democracy, Woodford Square.

The People Must be Herd manifesto

T’in Cow Fat Cow – The People must be Herd.


Dey belly full but we hungry
And right about now we angry
And de reason dat we angry
Is because we belly hungry

Tin Cow tin cow green grass dey over so
Fat cow de butcher callin yuh
Watch for yuh head ah warnin yuh
Otherwise in de pot yuh goin to go.

T’in Cow, 3 Canal

We represent the voiceless. The many thousands of Trinbagonians outside of the Red Zone. Whose tax dollars are being invested in a display that does not address their most urgent concerns.
New buildings, a repaved highway, painted lamp posts and hidden homeless do not mean that we are on the road to development.
In the midst of the Summit performance we ask, who is seeking the interests of the voiceless? Who is spending many many millions to address our concerns. Who is listening? Who will suffer the most in the face of a global economic meltdown?

The people of high risk communities must be heard.
The missing children must be heard.
The homeless people must be heard.
The women and children who live with abuse every day must be heard.
The people who will lose employment in the aftermath of the Summit must be heard.
The people of communities in danger of environmental destruction must be heard.
The physically challenged must be heard.

Caribbean Nationalisms: Trinidad and Jamaica

$2m flag in right hand upper quadrant

I've been in Trinidad the last couple of days where i'm contemplating the giant $2 million national flag fluttering in the breeze in Port-of-Spain, while hummingbirds fight each other for a suck at the red plastic feeder on the balcony of a friend's apartment. Found out yesterday that Trinidad and Tobago is suffering from a prolonged drought as is the rest of the Eastern Caribbean. Jamaica has also been severely affected by the lack of rainfall recently but the discussions around this never ever referred to the fact that this was a regionwide phenomenon.

I was interviewed practically on arrival for an online forum called NBS or the No Behaviour Show by @SanMan_ish or Hassan, someone i previously knew only on Twitter. Hassan had just started NBS the week before and was wishing he had access to a Jamaican perspective on various issues including water shortages, when my tweet announcing my arrival in TnT appeared in his timeline. Before you knew it i was being interviewed on a variety of subjects starting with something Jamaican Minister of Culture, Olivia Babsy Grange, had said at the opening ceremony of the International Reggae Conference at UWI, Mona. Was Jamaica losing Reggae to European musicians as Ms. Grange had suggested, Hassan wanted to know. I said i preferred to view singers such as Gentleman and Matisyahu as ambassadors for Reggae, taking a Jamaican product to new brand audiences. To hear more of what i said click here...

The International Reggae Conference at the University of the West Indies, Mona, was a big success i thought. The first morning I chaired a panel on Collection, Storage and Dissemination of Jamaican music with three participants, Herbie Miller, the director of the Jamaican Music Museum and two Americans; Elliott Lieb, founder of the Trade Roots archive, dedicated to collecting Jamaican music and Brad Klein, a film-maker working on a documentary on Jamaican ska. In the audience, amongst others, was Stranjah Cole, ska maestro, who features in the film.

Stranjah Cole seated in front row

Herbie Miller made an eloquent case for a budget to stock his museum and do the kind of work the foreigners were doing gratis out of love for Jamaica's music. How extraordinary i thought, that a case even needs to be made for something so obviously deserving of support. After all the Jamaican government had decided decades ago that Jamaican art was worthy of being collected, stored and disseminated, investing in a National Gallery for the purpose. And this despite the fact that Jamaican art is insignificant compared to Jamaican music which has virtually put the country on the map, creating Brand Jamaica and maintaining its profile to this day. Yet as Brad Klein pointed out many of the early recordings and films on Jamaican music have vanished without a trace. What a tragedy!

l to r: Chappie St Juste, Herbie Miller, Stranjah Cole, Brad Klein and Elliott Lieb

During the discussion that followed the presentations, cinematographer Chappie St. Juste who was in the audience, disclosed that the films were actually safely stored in vaults in England where they had been sent for processing and the task now was to repatriate them. But repatriate them to what? and where? and to what conditions? The music museum exists only in name. Perhaps instead of berating Europeans for 'stealing' our music we should be grateful to them for having stored our cultural products safely, something we ourselves have been careless about. Remember the scandal a few years ago when it was discovered that the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation archives had been vandalized, and that early recordings of Louise Bennett and others had vanished?

A few of my favourites...

In lieu of having anything amusing, meaningful or useful to say at the moment I'm going to present a selection of videos, blogs and articles i find totally worth recommending.

First, on the tail of my last post did you know that there is soon going to be a movie version of Bashment Granny? Click here for the Bashment Granny movie trailer which certainly looks promising. The film boasts good production values which bodes well for what might soon become an important new chapter in Jamaican film-making.

And the region is beginning to produce world-class animated shorts as well. Check out this absolutely charming flick about rivalry between street vendors of different nationalities in the republic of Trinidad and Tobago. The innovative cartoon focuses on the jostling between an African sno cone vendor and an Indian 'doubles' man. Featuring hilarious dialogue and a creative plot, the two resort to karate moves to settle their argument. The film won Animae Caribe's 2009 Most Oustanding Caribbean Animation Award.



Another innovative video offering from Trinidad and Tobago features Gabi Hossein, a lecturer at UWI, St. Augustine. A dedicated activist Gabi has employed her formidable creative skills to produce a video blog called "If I Were Prime Minister..." in which she mercilessly lampoons and takes down the political directorate of TnT about the absurdities that pass for governance. In the process Gabi also slyly parodies the aggrieved, aggressive posture of young male rappers. There are only two video so far but i look forward to regular instalments.

Gabi's introductory shot:



and her latest volley in which she deconstructs poll numbers:



And from further afield I really like this Zina Saunders portrait of Michael Jackson, done originally for The Progressive. What do YOU think?



Also check out the Booman Tribune for the best response to all the criticism of President Obama, it looks like a great blog which i'm going to try and check regularly.

And on the increasingly dismal Literature Nobel an excellent post by the Akhond of Swat:
Who, or why, or which, or what, Is the Akond of SWAT? well click on the link and find out!

Now to wind up, here's a despairing post from a schoolteacher in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. They are beginning to feel the kind of violence that we have become inured to here and Abbott, who is a powerful and eloquent writer vividly captures the sense of being drowned by a crime tsunami. Is this the way small islands crumble?:

"For the past month or so, SVG has been suffering from one of the most belligerent heat waves that I’ve ever experienced. My headaches, which had all but disappeared due to my quitting smoking and putting myself on a strict health regimen, are slowly becoming a constant irritant again. The other day, one of my students stripped off his shirt in class because the room where all my classes are held is a two by four plywood box that holds heat like a Pyrex dish. I allowed him to carry on simply because my own shirt was moulded to my body like I’d just been in a wet dress-shirt contest or similar. “Me skin hat” is a Vincentian Creole expression that goes further than just saying, “I feel hot”. It implies that the heat is so oppressive that your very skin feels as if it is peeling away from your flesh, the way an envelope peels open when it is steamed. This is the kind of heat we’re facing here."

And if you need a pick-me-upper after that read the latest Letter from Jamaica on what five years in Ja has taught the author: "1. White people who live in the ghetto are apparently either: (i) NGO workers (ii) crazy (iii) 'wutless' or (iv) German roots reggae singers."

Finally Heart of a Pirate, a novel about Anne Bonny by Pamela Johnson, the female pirate who once inhabited these shores, is now available in local bookstores.

Dragons CAN dance!

till i'm back...enjoy this...