10 August 2000, 803 words
Until his meeting with the Pentecostals, I was quite puzzled as to why Prime Minister Basdeo Panday was so adamant about pushing Clause Seven. His insistence on retaining this irrelevant portion of the Equal Opportunities Bill seemed politically counter-productive. After all, the only group which whole-heartedly supported Clause Seven was the Maha Sabha spokespersons and, if he wished, Panday could spit in those people's faces from now till election day and still be guaranteed their votes.
But when the Pentecostal leaders started patting themselves on the back for getting Panday to agree to amend the Clause so churches were excluded, and when I heard them praising him for being so cordial and reasonable, I started to see just how superb Panday's political instincts are.
I do not by this mean that Panday is politically intelligent. A politically intelligent leader uses his intelligence to negotiate power between groups within a society for the benefit of most or all. A politically instinctive leader uses his instincts to negotiate power for himself and/or his group.
Even before becoming law, Clause Seven has succeeded in driving the competing groups of our society into extreme positions. In so doing, it has heightened people's awareness of their differences, and different agendas. The instinctive leader depends on keeping the electorate tribal or ignorant in order to maintain power, and Clause Seven has already achieved this wonderfully well.
It is the old tactic of divide-and-rule, which Panday is skilfully using to retain his traditional ethnic support even as he tries to win some non-ethnic support with bribes of money, land, holidays and the repeal of legislation that isn't enforced.
All of which is not to say that Clause Seven isn't designed to stifle freedom of speech. That is its manifest intention, and it is noteworthy that everyone who has argued otherwise, from the Hindu columnists to UNC letter-writers to biased legal commentators, have been speaking as if key words in the clause (such as "offence", "incite", "insult", "humiliate" and "intimidate") have definite meanings. This is the mindset of illiterates, because emotion-words are, by definition, subjective. And it is the literate and the liberal that Clause Seven really targets.
One notes, for example, that the Maha Sabha leadership has argued that Clause Seven will afford protection for Hinduism which is not provided under the Blasphemy Act. Selwyn Ryan, to my amazement, has supported Sat Maharaj's call that this Act be extended to provide protection to non-Christian religions.
I had foolishly assumed that a political scientist would instead have argued that such a law has no place in a secular state. True, the Act is not enforced. If it was, Denis Solomon, B.C. Pires and myself would have been jailed several times already, since we have all questioned and/or mocked the Christian concept of God at various times.
But, while I don't expect the leadership of the Catholic or Anglican churches to put pressure on the powers-that-be to have us prosecuted, I am not so sanguine about the Maha Sabha Hindus or Muslims or Orishas, if criticizing their beliefs is made illegal.
If, for example, I write a column saying that marrying 12- and 14-year-old girls is wrong, the ASJA and the Maha Sabha would legitimately be able to take me before the EOB Commission since they both defend this right on religious/cultural grounds.
In similar fashion, if I give a lecture on humanism in which I argue that people who call homosexuals evil are bigots, then any Pentecostal pastor can charge me with offending his beliefs.
And, if I merely sit on the Brian Lara Promenade explaining to my attractive female companion why I think the existence of a Supreme Being is so unlikely as to be absurd, then any religious fundamentalist within earshot can haul me before the EOB Commission.
Until recently, though, I had not been too concerned about Clause Seven, assuming that it would not be passed on the Upper House. But if people like Ryan and Dana Seetahal, both university lecturers, can support such backward ideas, who is to say that the Independent Senators may not see Clause Seven as a reasonable and justifiable piece of legislation?
And, if that happens, there's only one thing I can do. I'll have to express my offence at everyone who writes that God punishes non-believers (intimidating me on the basis of religion); anyone who questions proven scientific theories like evolution (insulting me on the basis of origin); and anybody says Trini men are dogs (humiliating me on the basis of gender).
I doubt the Commission will take me on. But I'll keep them very busy explaining why they're not. And, if their explanations aren't satisfactory, I'll charge them with discrimination and bring them before themselves.
Copyright©2000 Kevin Baldeosingh