Former Finance minister Winston Dookeran has questioned the phenomenon of the "One Per cent" term - and whether the solution would be "found in the acceptance of political vendetta becoming a part of the national agenda, or the impartial use of the state apparatus be used to adjudicate on the conflicting contentions in the public space."
Dookeran said yesterday, "In modern times, this term was coined out of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement in the US in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. It was given economic credence by noted economist, Joseph Stiglitz in his May 2011 article titled 'Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%', which he described as a dangerous concentration of wealth and political power.
"Later that year, to American anthropologist David Graeber, the concept became a rallying call 'We are the 99%', shifting the phrase into a political narrative which framed 'the 99%' as an exploited majority. Naipaul's 1967 novel ‘The Mimic Men’ revealed the cultural torment of his colonial childhood and the search for identity and the yearning to imitate foreign ideas in post-colonial society. No wonder the concept of the One Per cent, soon became embedded in T&T’s political discourse. "
Dookeran was seemingly responding to the recent debate sparked by Attorney General John Jereme's revelatino, during the debate on the extension of the State of Emergency, that in its fight against crime, Government was going after the so-called one per cent community in T&T, a phrase used to refer to the Syrian-Lebanese community.
Weeks later, businessman Dominic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve were detained by the police under a Preventive Detention order in a case police claim involves conspiracy to murder Government officials.
Yesterday, Dookeran said, "Is the concept rooted in ‘reality’ of socio-economic conditions or merely an ‘illusion’ fuelled through public perception? Or is it but a ‘political metaphor’ that represents widespread frustrations and beliefs that well-connected elites have unequal influence to power? Or, even further, is the one per cent concept a ‘symptom’ rather than the cause of our development challenges? Or in public policy, is it part of the ‘disequilibrium trap’ in which the economy is caught. There is no doubt that all these factors provide partial explanations to the complexity of this phenomenon."
He added, "The real question is, however, would the solution be found in the acceptance of political vendetta becoming a part of the national agenda, or the impartial use of the state apparatus be used to adjudicate on the conflicting contentions in the public space. High public office, like the exalted role envisaged in the office of the Attorney General by the Constitution, as it exists - must indeed rise to a higher freedom to protect the very integrity of our governance system."
