24 September 1998, 977 words
It's not as easy to be a totalitarian dictator as it once was. Despite the pretensions of some, totalitarianism is pretty much out of fashion. Nowadays, if you wear jackboots and walk around with a riding crop, all that will happen is that strange men will come up to you and ask to be spanked.
Of course, there are alternatives. You could wear military dress uniform, as they do in Nigeria, or silly-looking headgear, like in Iran, or army fatigues as in Bosnia. But this would never work in Trinidad, where style is more important than substance. Here, our would-be dictators wear dashikis or kurtas or three-piece suits. But only the three-piece suits really give an impression of power, and even then only if you wear the right tie.
The other major barrier to totalitarian rule these days are the trappings of democracy, which have spread like a rash to about 60 percent of the world's governments in the past four decades. It is extremely difficult to become a dictator in any society that practises free speech, as we did in Trinidad long before it became a political principle (we call it picong.) That is why the first rule in establishing a totalitarian dictatorship is to shut up those who would criticize you. In ancient times, this meant targeting the poets and philosophers; in modern times, it means targeting calypsonians and journalists (which tells you how much standards have fallen in the last 3000 years.) But you have to be more subtle about how you handle such people these days. It used to that you could summarily execute people like the Roman orator Cicero, but even then you ran the risk of making their works even more popular. Nowadays, it is more effective to bribe them. Promises of more local programming on TV and radio, for example, short-circuit the brains of cultural activists (a feat which doesn't require much voltage in the first place.)
You should also try to get the intellectuals on your side. This is not because anyone listens to intellectuals unless they agree with their views already, but an effective totalitarian never leaves loose ends lying around. Sunday Express columnist Burton Sankeralli is a good example of what passes for intellectualism in T&T. Besides writing articles which are logically incoherent and entirely non-empirical, he promotes the idea that human rights and democracy are "liberal crap." What better ally could any would-be totalitarian want? If you can spread the idea that human rights and democracy - you know, stuff like equality before the law, the right to information, freedom of thought, expression, religion and association, political decisions determined by the will of the majority for the benefit of the majority, running a nation by rules rather than by personal whim - if you have spokespersons promoting the feeling that such ideas are "liberal crap", then your road to totalitarianism will be so much clearer.
Once you have begun attacking the ideological front, you must then attack the legal one (insisting loudly, of course, that you are "upholding the law.") You must try making people like Occah Seapaul, whose track record clearly demonstrates her willingness to bend the rules in order to hold on to public office, Senate president. You must try to pass laws allowing any place to be a jail and allowing game wardens to search and arrest anyone without a warrant: such regulations are invaluable for getting rid of those who oppose, or even just offend, you. You must whip up public hysteria about convicted killers so that, in the midst of trying to get them hanged, you can withdraw from human rights organizations and erase constitutional rights: this is necessary in order to allow you to trample on the human rights of ordinary citizens in the future, as well as ensuring that you can quickly hang anyone your game wardens arrest.
Even if you fail in these sallies, you will still succeed in distracting people from bread and butter issues, especially when the price of the former goes up. You see, besides the damn media, another modern barrier to totalitarian rule is that it just doesn't make economic sense. This didn't matter in the old days, but now even poor people, having lost all sense of propriety, feel they have a right to basic health care, education and even low-cost housing. In the modern world, constitutional democracy is directly linked to economic success. Singapore, for example, seems totalitarian but has built the world's most competitive economy, as ranked by the World Economic Forum, at least partly because Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's insistence on strict adherence to the rule of law has been essentially democratic (in the sense of applying to all equally.) Hence, Singapore is also one of the world's least corrupt nations - ninth of 52, according to Transparency International- so companies feel confident doing business there.
In Trinidad, however, six-for-one Susan Harrysingh is still in her well-paying job; Ken Soodhoo is still in the better-paying one that he created for himself; and Ish Galbaransingh once again has a multi-million dollar airport contract. But Dr. Anthony Elias has to resign for doing his job properly, KPMG is denied government contracts for the same reason, and Nipdec's Ian Telfer and Roger McKenzie are now out of their jobs. People with principles, you see, do not last long in a totalitarian climate.
In fact, by the time Ish, Steve, Brian and all their friends are through with us, there certainly won't be any money left for luxuries such as food, medicine, education or employment for the average citizen. Not that such issues matter, I suppose, once people are more concerned with getting their own ethnic group into government rather than with effective governance. Just remember: the children of Basdeo Panday and Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj are all safely ensconced in other countries.
Copyright ©1998 Kevin Baldeosingh