AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s In­de­pen­dence Day as­sess­ment that Trinidad and To­ba­go should be fur­ther ahead af­ter 64 years of In­de­pen­dence, giv­en the foun­da­tion in­her­it­ed from Britain, has trig­gered a sharp his­tor­i­cal re­buke, with a his­to­ri­an ac­cus­ing her of pre­sent­ing a dis­tort­ed pic­ture of colo­nial rule.

In her In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage post­ed on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­mer colo­nial pow­ers left the coun­try in 1962 as a “very pros­per­ous func­tion­ing coun­try,” ar­gu­ing that its post-in­de­pen­dence short­com­ings should no longer be blamed on its colo­nial past.

“Af­ter 64 years, It’s time we grow up and stop blam­ing our prob­lems on our colo­nial past to es­cape ac­cept­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for bad de­ci­sions we made post-in­de­pen­dence that have re­sult­ed in neg­a­tive con­se­quences for our­selves and our na­tion,” she said.

But his­to­ri­an and repa­ra­tions ad­vo­cate Dr Claudius Fer­gus re­ject­ed that as­sess­ment, say­ing “it is re­gret­table that the Prime Min­is­ter chose to lam­bast the na­tion on its 64th birth­day.”

In her mes­sage, Per­sad-Bisses­sar point­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic po­si­tion at In­de­pen­dence as ev­i­dence of the coun­try’s strong start­ing point.

She not­ed that when Trinidad and To­ba­go be­came in­de­pen­dent, it had a “high­er per capi­ta in­come lev­el” than coun­tries such as Japan, Chile, Greece, Spain, Sin­ga­pore, Por­tu­gal, Mex­i­co, Turkey, Iraq, Brazil, Malaysia, Iran and Chi­na. Now, she says, those na­tions have “su­per­seded us.”

But Dr Fer­gus coun­tered that, while he is not an econ­o­mist, eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors such as gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) and per-capi­ta in­come can­not be used in iso­la­tion to de­ter­mine whether colo­nial Trinidad and To­ba­go was tru­ly pros­per­ous for the pop­u­la­tion as a whole.

He added that many of these coun­tries have 200 years of in­de­pen­dence be­hind them and most still suf­fer from in­equal­i­ties.

But in ref­er­ence to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Dr Fer­gus asked: “If the coun­try was pros­per­ous un­der colo­nial­ism, where was that pros­per­i­ty re­flect­ed? In the $2-a-day plan­ta­tion wage for men and less for women?”

Dr Fer­gus al­so made a call for the writer of the Prime Min­is­ter’s In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage to be re­moved from her team.

“I think the Prime Min­is­ter should fire the per­son who wrote this em­bar­rass­ing speech. To praise colo­nial­ism for ‘a well-or­gan­ised le­gal and gov­er­nance struc­ture.’ I find that is pure ob­scu­ran­tism.”

Draw­ing on the work of West In­di­an schol­ar Frantz Fanon, Dr Fer­gus ar­gued that colo­nial­ism must in­stead be un­der­stood as a sys­tem built around con­trol and vi­o­lence.

He not­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar, dur­ing her time as ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter, played a sig­nif­i­cant role in ex­pand­ing ac­cess to sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion, a sit­u­a­tion he said was “un­think­able un­der colo­nial­ism.”

But Dr Fer­gus was not alone in his cri­tique.

Po­lit­i­cal leader of Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) David Ab­du­lah al­so re­ject­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s as­sess­ment, call­ing the po­si­tion “ahis­tor­i­cal” for over­look­ing how colo­nial struc­tures re­mained em­bed­ded in na­tion­al life post-in­de­pen­dence.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ab­du­lah said, “Our po­lit­i­cal sys­tem was es­sen­tial­ly not changed from the colo­nial sys­tem. The so-called two-par­ty West­min­ster sys­tem which the British de­vised in or­der to di­vide the mass of the pop­u­la­tion. And they did that type of di­vi­sion all over the em­pire pri­or to coun­tries be­com­ing in­de­pen­dent.”

Ab­du­lah added that the na­tion’s eco­nom­ic sys­tem has re­mained large­ly un­changed since in­de­pen­dence, which he views as a di­rect lega­cy of colo­nial­ism.

“In terms of our eco­nom­ic sys­tem, it has re­mained es­sen­tial­ly a plan­ta­tion eco­nom­ic sys­tem where we pro­duce what we do not con­sume, and we con­sume what we do not pro­duce. And we are to­tal­ly de­pen­dent on ex­ter­nal fac­tors of mar­kets for price and de­mand for our prod­ucts and so on.

Tak­ing his as­sess­ment a step fur­ther, the MSJ leader ar­gued that the coun­try’s is­sues stem not on­ly from post-In­de­pen­dence de­ci­sion-mak­ing, but from a fun­da­men­tal lack of vi­sion and lead­er­ship.

“Our coun­try lacks vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship that en­ables the coun­try to unite and co­here around a sin­gle vi­sion for the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try,” Ab­du­lah said.

“In­stead, our po­lit­i­cal lead­ers are more in­tent on di­vid­ing and at­tack­ing each oth­er, di­vid­ing the pop­u­la­tion in or­der to ei­ther win of­fice or to main­tain of­fice. And that’s our re­al­i­ty,” he added.