PRIME MINISTER OF Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, created a storm in a teacup over a hurricane last week, with her comment that Trinidad and Tobago’s giving of aid to St Lucia, where 11 people were killed and untold damage was done by Hurricane Tomas, would be conditional upon “what’s in it for us”.
Now, some might say that, though her first public statement to the region after becoming prime minister might have been justified or even overdue – that Trinidad & Tobago was not an ATM for CARICOM – last week’s gratuitous remark in the face of the suffering of her West Indian family, was qualitatively different, and reeked of insensitivity unprecedented within CARICOM, perhaps within history.
I don’t recall, for example, President Obama openly considering what the United States stood to gain when the Americans moved in to help Haiti after January’s earthquake. Applying the Kamla test, every Haitian getting medical attention in Haiti would have to agree not to try to emigrate to the United States in the future.
Other obviously disloyal Trinis might wonder whether Ms Persad-Bissessar even understood the concept of giving to others in their time of need. If you give someone something, they might say, it’s crass to tell them how to use it; it diminishes, even negates, your supposed generosity.
Some unpatriotic Trinis might even be boldfaced enough to suggest that, if Trinidad & Tobago had a mind to insist that any money it gave to St Lucia should be used to purchase goods and services from the donor nation, Trinidad & Tobago shouldn’t even bother to send cash, and should just send what it wanted to sell to St Lucia directly. Don’t give them US$6m and then count the pennies until it was all clawed back. Just send them US$6B worth of Trini goods.
And if you can’t quite make the money stretch to six big ones using quality Trinidad products like Hong Wing coffee, Holiday Foods Corn Curls, Matouk’s Pepper Jelly, Angostura 1919 rum and cases of Carib and Stag, well then just throw in some Three Plumes matches (you can light up to one candle with just one box), a container or two of rusted old steelpans and grocery carts with one wheel missing, and all the other old junk Trini manufacturers haven’t been able to move.
And call that “aid”; even if the only person you’re helping is yourself.
Other Trinis – those who might qualify as human beings, perhaps – might even be outraged that, at a time when her brethren in St Lucia were recovering from actual and facing possible death, Kamla should even think about, far less focus on, money. The cynical might laugh openly and declare that Trinidad & Tobago’s ruthless preoccupation with material gain should be so plainly revealed by the holder of the highest elective office in the land.
But I’m with Kamla.
Indeed, I’m going to take it farther. The next time I give a paro on Broad Street a dollar, I’m going to insist he use it to buy a NATION and read my column. And he better firetrucking enjoy it, too!
•B.C. Pires is obviously St Lucian.