Reenvisioning WhiteHall People before Power and the Politics of Ugly
Dr Kris Rampersad 
WhiteHall for the People hosts launch of LiTTscapes - Landscapes f Fiction with LiTTributes and LiTTours in novel heritage exploration by Dr Kris Rampersad
Sitting in the once-lavish and ornate abandoned office in Whitehall on the 50th Jubilee anniversary of Independence, rehearsing next generations into a new vision for a new society – for the launch of LiTTscapes- Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago – I pictured our first Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams on that first Independence Day, similarly looking across the Queen’s Park Savannah to the huddled huts on the hills of Laventille and visioning our new nation.
He could not – humanist that he was – have not felt the challenge and burden of nationhood; of liberating and lifting his people out of poverty and oppression; of building a society from communities of so many ethnicities, races and colours; a country ‘where every creed and race finds an equal place,’ as pronounced in the national anthem.
Did he? Have we?
Multispectral
The reality has been much different. While in the 1961 general elections on the eve of Independence, a whooping 88 percent of the elctorate voted. That would be first and the last year that there is such euphoria over elections as there was a subsequent waning of interest. Then, the Opposition party commanded one third of the electoral interests.
As I have presented in Through the Political Glass Ceiling and other analyses, the contending forces, represented not only in the opposition party, but other interests opposed to, dissatisfied, or who felt dispossessed and unaccommodated in the democracy, of whatever race, class, gender, have been growing exponentially, represented in the less than two thirds voter turnout in elections since. That theory challenges and defies all the proponents and pundits who proclaim that our national politics is race-based. I reiterate, it is NOT!
Multispectral Diversity
The reality of the multispectral diversity within that disenchantment have been glossed over, repainted into black and brown by the psuedo intelligencia who pass for leaders of public opinion and parotted by media to two-tone into a warped representation of the society as two-toned rather than a diverse nation trying to grow and bloom into its multicultural self.
Fifty-eight years have gone? How your feel?
It is a question that the newly constituted Government, Cabinet and soon to be convened Parliament may at some time be called to contemplate, once the rose glow of the election victory fades.
Can the young energetic, optimistic, newcomers hold sway against the hardened old guard steeped in cultures of corruption, nepotism, devisiveness, and disrespect?
Can they bring different tones and complexion to the newly refurbished WhiteHall and Red House that can propel the nation into a new era of defvelopment into the Post Pandemic Planet?
Politics of Ugly
That has been the challenge of Independence, tried and failed. It is difficult to see any of the players of those failed systems and processes and proponents of the politics of ugly as messiahs and liberators of the Post Pandemic Planet.
The beating of Tassa-playing of Soca as sounds of accommodation of multi-ethnicity are the smokescreen of diversity that supports greedy opportunists willing to accept second class status for the profits that may be derived from political affiliation. The attainment of White Hall as a symbol of that triumph, while the huddled huts across the hill look in and on in a daze evoke Orwellian shape shifting and betrayal.
That is the narrative and reality that needs to be erased by the national custodians of the Constitution which envisioned respect for the values intelligence, experience, talents and skills of all the races and ethnicities and colours as necessary to build a nation. It is a challenge, all the more relevant with the novel Challenges of the Novel Corona Virus Pandemic.
No one who envisions himself or herself a leader can efectively disenfranchise, dispossess and disown half of an already small population, with already shrinking resources, and expect to survive into the Post Pandemic Planet. That would be the rude awakening of those clinging to old status quos and known norms.
New Narratives
It was the new norm that I envisioned in bringing to the neglected, crumbling, WhiteHall, walls and floors stained with accumulated pigeon poo, the children of LiTTscapes; authors Michael Anthony and Earl Lovelace on the same floor as the cornsoup man and doubles lady mingled with Ambassadors and Senators – making real the vision of a new society where ‘every creed and race finds an equal place’, not as lip service, but to be the change. The rewards were the tears of joy from the security guards, otherwise tasked with warding off the stray dogs and pigeons of the monument.
As the children reenacted the vision and insights of other visionaries and intellectuals who dug into the recesses of their souls and the sores of myriad experiences so that we could become better human beings, I glowed in hearing the murmuring approvals of my multispectral guests. Author Earl Lovelace and Michael Anthony, honoured for their relentless patriotism nodded in approval as the children interpreted their words penned into words made flesh.
WhiteHall opposite Laventille
One media house labled the just finished general election, the Battle for WhiteHall without a sense of the irony. White Hall, neglected for decades, then refurbished at an accumulated cost that could set Laventille directly opposite on a path to prosperity, the covetted prize of every election since Williams, is also the symbol of why Laventille as well as many other districts, is in the state of underdevelopment, and are likely to become more so entrenched as the Novel Corona Virus winds its pathway to infect economic, social, political, cultural norms and force or enforce the new normal.
From the sounds outside, from social media drowning out everything else, have we? Could we?
The Novel C- Challenge to the new Government
As the established systems and status quo of the world spins out of control, reeling from the impacts of the Novel Corona Virus , the new Government, Cabinet and Parliament wil have to look for stimulus from which they can propel themselves beyond the diseased gridlocks of the past. Who, or what will be that stimulus? And how will they rise to the challenge? Their place in posterity remains pending.
Read more about Independence in this link
About Dr Kris Rampersad
Dr Kris Rampersad is holder of the Trinidad and Tobago National Medal (Gold) for Development of Women and Journalism, Pan American Health Journalism Award for Excellence in Health Journalism and other award for Excellence in Journalism, Culture and the Arts. She is sometimes referred to as the Caribbean Queen of Culture. She is a Woman Technmakers’ Ambassador, Google Digital Skills Ambassador, Small island Innovators’ Ambassador and WorldPulse (Gender) Digital Skills Ambassador.
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