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Selwyn
R Cudjoe
A
culture of life
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Government unable to respond adequately
to Laventille crisis.
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PNM has abandoned Laventille and betrayed trust placed
in it.
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PNM should not let desire for just revenge fall on it.
There is a frightening scene at the end of Emmanuel Appadocca,
the first novel written by a Trinidadian in 1854 in which
Emmanuel Appadocca, the major protagonist and son James
Willmington, an English sugar planter, breaks into his father’s
home in St Ann’s, seizes him and condemns him to death
for abandoning him while he was a child.
In this novel, author Maxwell Philip examined the implications
of the lex talionis—or the law of just revenge—and
sought to understand how it should be applied in the particular
circumstance.
In this philosophical novel that drew on Enlightenment ideas
of the 18th century, Philip explored the question: “What
does a devoted son do when he is betrayed by his father?”
He said:
“Nature
revolts only against injustice. All things are entitled
to a certain measure of justice; and the natural contract
between parent and child is based on the condition that,
as the former has loved the latter, and protected its infancy,
the latter will yield obedience, honour and respect, and
gratitude to him. Where the condition be not fulfilled,
the contract, by necessity, ceases, the child becomes absolved
from his obligation; and if he resents more than ordinary
wrongs that may have been done to him—nay, nature calls
upon him to undertake the office of avenger, and to vindicate
her law.”
These words ring with enormous relevance as one reads of
the terrible things that are happening in Laventille and
the inability of Government to respond adequately to this
crisis. It is as if decades of neglect are coming home to
haunt the PNM and, like a neglectful parent, it can neither
understand the child’s torment nor why he feels the
need for vengeance. Anglican Bishop Calvin Best suggested
that “a culture of death is being created in this country”
in which life is absurd and death itself has its own grotesque
meaning.
Fifty years ago the children of Laventille placed their
faith in the PNM. In its greatest hour of distress, when
NAR swamped the country, the people of Laventille kept the
faith and supported the PNM. Today, the PNM has abandoned
Laventille and betrayed the trust these children placed
in them. Were he alive today, Jesus would say the PNM abandoned
the people of Laventille in the “heat and burthen of
the day.”
While the Government has set up the East Port-of-Spain Development
Company to develop the area, no one knows what its plans
are. Moreover, the people of the area are not involved in
their own development. They are seen as mere objects of
this grandiose project, rather than subjects who are involved
in constructing their lives.
While lots of money have been spent (perhaps wasted is a
better word) in the area, no one has outlined what the issues
are and how best to solve them. No transformational work
is taking place and no one knows of any specific plans to
stem this national blight.
Laventille is in crisis and its population is without hope.
The police are afraid to enter the area, unable to restore
law and order, and Laventillians have taken the law into
their hands. Government’s lack of transparency suggests
that there are no tangible plans to deal with the inadequate
housing, lack of education, unemployment, family discord
and broken lives that overrun this area.
Previously, PNM fought under the slogan: “People matter.”
Every party member understood that development involves
the satisfaction of people’s needs and a determination
to prepare them to face the multiple tasks that confront
them. That is the spirit of PNM’s 2020 vision: a dream
to achieve developed nation status by the year 2020.
PNM cannot respond to this problem adequately unless it
puts out a development plan for this area; solicits the
views of the national community; engages the energies of
the people of the area; and then urges the national community
to come together to solve the problem. It is too great a
task for a company or a party to achieve. It is a task the
nation must solve.
In Emmanuel Appadocca, Philip said that duty “is poised
between the reward of virtue and retribution. Man has the
license to choose, between either meriting the former, or
bringing down the latter upon himself. The great error of
your social physics (sociology) is that you remit your penalty
to a period of time, which it were unimagined, would fail
to afford the principal and best effect of retribution—the
deterring from crimes.”
PNM should not let the desire of Laventille’s people
for just vengeance fall upon them. Like Meursault, the major
protagonist of Camus’ The Stranger, it should not let
any young man of Laventille feel that the blind rage to
kill washes him clean, rid him of hope and, for the first
time, “in that night alive with signs and stars, he
opens himself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
Duty and the law of natural justice demand that PNM come
up with a comprehensive plan to deal with the problems of
Laventille. Laventillians must be encouraged to recommit
to a culture of life.
n Prof Cudjoe’s e-mail is
scudjoe@wellesley.edu
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