Tivoli Gardens . . . the political garrison which strikes the most fear in the minds of Jamaicans. – The Jamaica GleanerThe month of May 2010 may go down in history as one of glorious victories, but also of gory stories.Those of us across the Caribbean who subscribe to the rule of law and to democratic traditions must feel a sense of pride and satisfaction that in spite of a rising crime rate and a growing trend of kidnappings, the people of Trinidad and Tobago removed Patrick Manning from manning the affairs of state without “pelting one stone” or firing one bullet. Our heartiest congratulations to the new prime minister of the twin-island republic, Kamla Persad Bissessar.Thanks to the gamble of Patrick Manning, the oil-rich republic now has it first female prime minister. While coalition governments are not known for ruling without rancour and for masking their inherent divisions, the United National Congress seems to offer Trinidad its best chance ever to prove the pundits wrong.With Basdeo Panday out of the way and Patrick Manning reflecting on his political future, it is a woman who will probably pour oil on and bring calm to the political waters of the country. The arrogant confidence of Patrick Manning was forced to give way the quiet calm assurance of Mrs Bissessar, who will now have to earn her way into an otherwise male-dominated Caribbean political leadership culture. Politics has taught us that putting aside differences and mobilizing to win an election is one thing, but when one assumes the mantle of leadership of a country, whose racial and ethnic diversity is so striking, for the woman-led UNC government the task at hand will not be easy.After the honeymoon is over, the wave of election promises must soon give way to performance that must give life and meaning to the party’s manifesto. We wish the people of Trinidad and Tobago well under their new political dispensation, and hope that one day a former long-serving Prime Minister Patrick Manning will explain to the world why he felt obliged to snap his own political neck by calling a snap election even before reaching halfway in his five-year mandate. As we move away from the southern Caribbean and wing our way over the island chain to the land of Bob Marley’s anthem of One Love And One Heart, the peaceful change of government in Trinidad and Tobago pales in significance when juxtaposed with the gory stories that have emerged from the “goldless” leadership of Prime Minister Bruce Golding whose government must take full responsibility for the untold bruises it has inflicted on the Jamaican people. While over 1 000 000 040 Trinidadians were dealing in the power of the vote, the citizens of Tivoli Gardens and the country’s security forces transformed an otherwise “peaceful” community to a true “Gaza” strip, the likes of which we in the Caribbean have not seen since the invasion of Grenada by the United States. It is one thing to have high crime, with the homicide rate exceeding 1 000 annually, but when the security forces are forced to turn their high-powered weapons on their own citizens, something is fundamentally wrong in the society. But just as Patrick Manning must accept full responsibility for the demise of his government, having misjudged the mood of the people, Bruce Golding will eventually have to answer to his countrymen, the region and perhaps the wider world.While the Golding government has vowed to wage an all-out assault on what he calls evil, he is literally digging his own political grave that will exceed that in which the victims of the massacre of Tivoli Gardens will eventually be buried. It will be a case of the “strange bedfellow” truly coming back to haunt him. But the killings of Kingston speak to more fundamental and deep-seated problems facing the wider Jamaican society. When the criminality of guns and drugs literally highjack the state, what we have seen in the land of Jimmy Cliff’s birth may only be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The siege of Tivoli and its devastating impact both on Jamaica and the wider Caribbean is a sordid tale of the dangers of allowing violence, gangs and criminality to become entrenched in a society. Given its “sound and fury”, it may be more than “a tale told by an idiot”, for it signifies something! Over the last two decades or so, I have been concerned that there has been a potential “Tivoli” emerging within the Barbadian society, albeit in its embryonic stages.In virtually every community we have allowed able-bodied young men to established satellite stations from which they peddle drugs and violence and criminality under the guise of entrepreneurship. Yes, ostensibly they sell fruits and perhaps they should be commended for the service they provide our communities.But let us not be fooled or be duped into believing that that is their motivating mantra. All Barbados knows different. In conclusion, it is time for the David Thompson administration to seek to mobilise the wasting potential of the thousands of Barbadians youths who are clothing themselves in the garb of crime and violence – a camouflage deceptively dangerous.Our failure to be proactive, our tendency to be in denial, and our misguided self-righteous view that it can’t happen here may one day lead us away from the victory of the vote into the gardens of drugs, gangs and criminality of the kind now known to Tivoli!
Matthew D. Farley is an educator, secondary school principal, chairman of the National Forum on Education and a social commentator; email [email protected].
