Religious leaders warn political rhetoric threatening racial harmony

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Two re­li­gious lead­ers are sound­ing the alarm over in­creas­ing­ly hos­tile po­lit­i­cal rhetoric, call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les to tem­per their lan­guage be­fore racial un­der­tones and per­son­al at­tacks deep­en di­vi­sions in the coun­try.

In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion pres­i­dent Dr El­lis Bur­ris and Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin say the es­ca­lat­ing war of words be­tween po­lit­i­cal lead­ers is send­ing the wrong mes­sage to the pop­u­la­tion, warn­ing that the con­se­quences ex­tend far be­yond the po­lit­i­cal are­na.

Their con­cerns come amid a re­cent pub­lic ex­change be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle, which has been marked by per­son­al in­sults, ac­cu­sa­tions of racism and ref­er­ences to racial di­vi­sions with­in the coun­try’s plur­al so­ci­ety.

The lat­est con­fronta­tion fol­lowed a dis­pute over elec­tric­i­ty restora­tion in Beetham Gar­dens and Laven­tille af­ter Sat­ur­day’s fire at a Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go com­pound in Laven­tille.

Dur­ing the heat­ed ex­change, Prime Min­is­ter ac­cused Mar­celle and his sup­port­ers of har­bour­ing ha­tred to­wards In­di­ans and Africans who sup­port the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, de­scrib­ing the MP’s con­duct as “swine be­hav­iour” and sug­gest­ing that some peo­ple could be tak­en out of the gut­ter with­out los­ing their bit­ter­ness.

Mar­celle re­spond­ed by de­scrib­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar as an “old, se­nile, wicked and evil woman drunk with pow­er” and ac­cus­ing her of pur­su­ing a racist and apartheid agen­da.

For Bur­ris, how­ev­er, the prob­lem runs deep­er than po­lit­i­cal dis­agree­ment.

“Racism is a spir­i­tu­al dis­ease,” he said, ar­gu­ing that prej­u­dice is learned rather than some­thing peo­ple are born with.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Bur­ris said the coun­try’s lead­ers must recog­nise their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to set an ex­am­ple, warn­ing that the lan­guage used at the high­est lev­els of gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion can in­flu­ence at­ti­tudes through­out the wider com­mu­ni­ty.

“You have to be tem­pered and bal­anced in your lan­guage,” he said, adding that in­di­vid­u­als must pay clos­er at­ten­tion to what they say be­cause “it doesn’t af­fect them on­ly, it af­fects the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty.”

While Bur­ris ac­knowl­edged the po­ten­tial for an es­ca­la­tion in the war of words, he em­pha­sised the need to in­ter­vene be­fore the sit­u­a­tion de­te­ri­o­rates fur­ther.

His mes­sage to the Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader was di­rect: “They must show love, true love, not on­ly to each oth­er, and re­spect their of­fice.”

Mean­while, Pas­tor Dot­tin said the coun­try was ap­proach­ing a point of “overkill”, ex­press­ing deep con­cern about the di­rec­tion of po­lit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the ap­par­ent widen­ing gap be­tween Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion.

“I am con­cerned, I am very, very con­cerned about the lan­guage,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

Dot­tin ques­tioned whether there would be an op­por­tu­ni­ty dur­ing the cur­rent par­lia­men­tary term for the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to sit to­geth­er out­side Par­lia­ment and reach con­sen­sus on how to man­age the coun­try’s af­fairs.

He said Trinidad and To­ba­go was fac­ing se­ri­ous chal­lenges that re­quired co­op­er­a­tion, not fur­ther po­lit­i­cal hos­til­i­ty.

But he fears the in­creas­ing­ly in­flam­ma­to­ry rhetoric is mak­ing such co­op­er­a­tion more dif­fi­cult.

Dot­tin al­so point­ed to con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions at the Na­tion­al Coun­cil for In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) in Ch­agua­nas, in­clud­ing res­ig­na­tions from the board and pub­lic ac­cu­sa­tions and counter-ac­cu­sa­tions, as an­oth­er source of con­cern.

He stressed that po­lit­i­cal dis­agree­ments were in­evitable, but warned that racial slurs and the rep­e­ti­tion of of­fen­sive lan­guage in re­tal­ia­to­ry ex­changes on­ly com­pound­ed the prob­lem.

“We have to elim­i­nate that from our lan­guage. We have to refuse to use it,” he said.

Dot­tin ar­gued that in a so­ci­ety com­pris­ing dif­fer­ent eth­nic, re­li­gious and so­cial groups, po­lit­i­cal lead­ers must recog­nise the im­por­tance of build­ing bridges rather than widen­ing di­vi­sions.

He called for an ur­gent meet­ing be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader to es­tab­lish a clear com­mit­ment to re­mov­ing in­flam­ma­to­ry ex­pres­sions from po­lit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Dot­tin ac­knowl­edged that po­lit­i­cal spar­ring and pi­cong were part of the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal cul­ture, but said there was a dis­tinc­tion be­tween spir­it­ed ex­changes and at­tacks that be­come deeply per­son­al, hos­tile and po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful.