Spin doctors are out and about

04 Dec, 2000
If Gypsy and Chaitan were holders of dual citizenship on Nomination Day, then their nominations are invalid. It is as simple and straightforward as that. It matters not what the spin doctors and sickening apologists may come up with.

If the laws of the land have been breached, then the offence must be dealt with immediately without any pussyfooting.

How often have we been told by the incumbents, particularly the AG, that the laws on the statute books must be enforced at all costs; that if the population requires certain laws be changed or reformed because of anomalies, or if certain clauses have become anachronistic, then there is a particular process to ensure this. But, he has argued, until such time, once the law remains on the books as is, it must be enforced.

For five years, ad nauseam, the incumbents have carried on relentlessly in this manner. Take it to the police, take it to the police, the PM used to cry like a broken record, and the DPP's office and the police will investigate expeditiously and enforce the law.

Suddenly, the chickens have come home to roost, and the poisoned chalice has been returned to their lips. How pathetic is it to hear these very people now appealing for "sober restraint" and "magnanimity" when they are the ones who have reduced this place to being a town without pity and to being a country without compassion and consideration for the "other".

"Do them before they do us," and "none must escape unscathed," have been the underlying philosophy of their governance.

What is clear is every effort will be made by the ruling party to get Gypsy and Chaitan to contest the respective two seats on December 11, even if the seats are to be declared vacant by the courts afterwards.

That, certainly in the view of the ruling party, is not an exercise in futility, because if this route is taken, many are of the view that by-elections will have to be held and the UNC will have another bite of the cherry and an even chance of winning the seats at the end of the day.

Others say "no" to this view because the process was fouled up from the very beginning. What, in the view of the UNC leadership, must not be allowed to happen is Gypsy's and Chaitan's nominations be declared invalid immediately, for that will give the opposition the two seats even before December 11. That they will never be able to live down!

Such eventuality, given the fact that the elections seem too close to call, would be tantamount to a collapse of incumbency. Their natural constituencies would never forgive them for such a horror.

So, the spin doctors have been put to work. What is amazing is the amount of them that have appeared ­ literally gushing out of the woodwork ­ attempting to obfuscate the issue. Suddenly, legal minds, according to the Rastas, are "understanding to misunderstand."

The framers of our Constitution are suddenly being blamed for ambiguity, for discrepancies between clauses of the Constitution and the Representation Act; the Opposition likewise is being made to appear to be "criminal vultures" who are bent on blocking the people of Ortoire/Mayaro and Pointe-a- Pierre from exercising their democratic rights; the Opposition is being painted as immoral for seeking to prevent natural citizens, who hold dual citizenship, from serving this country as political representatives of constituencies.

Suddenly "false declarations" are being seen as mere "dotishness" and "minor dishonesty", and the Opposition is being chided for attempting to win an election in a "deceitful manner," whatever that means.

Other forms of idiocy include the view that, once the returning officers signed the respective nomination forms, the process cannot be challenged even if there were false declarations therein.

The twists and turns of the spin doctors are too numerous to list and, in the end, all their prognoses reek of common chicanery or "smartmanism" and lack any intellectual rigour. No wonder there are many educators who hold to the view that the problems of this country start not with those who fail academically but precisely with those who pass with flying colours. However, by far the biggest crime so far is the silence of the ruling party and their spin doctors now that people are being arrested on charges of padding electoral lists in certain marginal constituencies.

Interestingly, padding involves, likewise, false declarations. One falsely declares to the EBC that one has removed oneself from one polling division to another, seeking thereby to vote in the latter.

The question then is: why aren't Gypsy and Chaitan also being arrested? False declaration is false declaration! What is good for the goose is good for the gander. And, it is not that the spin doctors didn't try at the very onset to put their spin on the padding charges! They concentrated too much on discrediting the individual who, it was said, had passed information to the police, when, in fact, the investigation had gone beyond him.

Then it was the case of "only 252 cases" of attempted padding. Then, a question of the Opposition being involved in padding too and some of them may be arrested. Then there came, by extension of this logic, the classic: that "scientific gerrymandering of constituency boundaries (in the past) is similar to voter padding (at present.)"

In other words, the EBC was in cahoots with past governments to gerrymander boundaries, so it is consequently morally just for the present incumbents to condone voter padding.

My God! More horrifying is it when one considers that most of those arrested are women, who were probably led like innocent lambs to the slaughter; women who will now possess criminal records for the rest of their lives, while men such as Gypsy and Chaitan and the incumbent male leaders are free to continue spreading their poison. But, then again, women of the tribe have always been cannon fodder for ethnic nationalists.

The problem with ethnic nationalists and tribal spin doctors is that their view of the world never takes them farther than their own noses, and the only breath of life they deem valid is their own.