10 September 1999, 844 words
The law is a system of rules designed to prevent people from committing heinous acts, like putting ketchup on scrambled eggs. No one knows when the law was invented. Some scientists theorise that the first law was passed when one homo habilis killed another homo habilis by hitting him with a roast leg of saber-toothed tiger, and the chief homo habilis grew incensed because it was the last piece. Other scientists disagree, arguing that it was probably homo erectus and a broiled haunch of woolly mammoth.
Christian theologians have a different view, holding that God invented law after He realized that free will was a really bad idea. Not only were Adam and Eve having sexual congress all day, but the dishes were piling up in the kitchen sink. So God told Adam and Eve that they mustn't eat from the Tree of Knowledge, since He was afraid that Adam might learn about foreplay and that Eve would find out that multiple orgasms were not only possible, but more fun than Scrabble.
Hindu acharyas hold that the world is an illusion but laws are eternal, so it's morally correct to to cut off the hand of a chamar if he raises it to a Brahmin. (However, leniency is recommended if the chamar was just scratching his head.) Muslim maulanas insist that all laws come from Allah, and that therefore any law which prevents men from marrying 12-year-old girls is illegal. This concept is called lex aeterna, which means "eternal law" and not, as you thought, child abuse.
Obviously, the law, unlike Dhanraj Singh's brain, is no simple matter. That is why the Siparia Regional Council cannot decide if a name is a name. Yet the law can actually be quite easy to understand, once you forget how it is supposed to work and look at how it actually works.
A basic precept of law is jus gentium, which means "law applying to all people". (I could have told you that at the start, but I have found that using Latin phrases helps keep away skettels.) Possession of marijuana, for example, is illegal in theory. The theory is that people should not feel good unless they work so hard at it that they're too tired to enjoy their pleasure. Alcohol is legal only because it's a depressant, though people are usually too drunk to notice. Tobacco helps you stay calm, because after you get lung cancer every other problem will seem trivial.
In practice, though, marijuana is illegal only for poor people. If you get caught and convicted, but your father is rich and you're going off to a university in foreign, you won't even have your arrest recorded. Or you might even have all charges dropped because, under cross-examination from lawyers so skilled that they could get truth from Agriculture Minister Reeza Mohammed, police officers will confess to lying for absolutely no reason.
Don't expect these officers to be charged or even disciplined, though. In Trinidad, even retired police officers can fatally shoot someone, get a weekend to put their affairs in order, and then have their case dismissed. You see, killing someone in Trinidad and Tobago is only technically illegal. It's only if you're not rich and/or fair-skinned that it's actually illegal. Once you have those advantages, though, the coroner will be found to be incompetent for you, but not for anyone who's poor and brown-skinned. You can even have your pitbulls kill one man and badly maul another, and the DPP won't charge you for manslaughter. That is because the police were told that thieves cut a hole in your fence, and the police know that wealthy people don't lie. On the other hand, if you're not wealthy and your dog kills a non-Rasta, you'll be charged for manslaughter even if you immediately put down the dog and express deep regret.
You see, in the eyes of the law, regret cuts no ice if you aren't rich or have people testifying to your character. But if you get a migraine headache and shoot someone (but not the someone you were aiming at), you can get priest, police and paranderos to testify to your good character and bad marksmanship. The judge is then assured that next time you have a migraine and someone gets you vex, you'll just pray, file a complaint, and sing Rio Manzanares.
The Government supports this kind of law, since the Prime Minister continually argued that the State had to carry out hangings because it was the law. This wasn't even true but, as attorney James Aboud has pointed out, although it is quite clear that the paving of the Savannah was quite illegal, the Government suddenly couldn't care less about the legal niceties.
So this is how the law works in Trinidad and Tobago. Or, as some might put it, doesn't. But they are only the minority who care about things like justice, democracy and grass. We can dismiss them. They probably don't even put ketchup on their eggs.
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Baldeosingh