Fitzgerald Hinds, in his first incarnation under the
Patrick Manning administration, was largely a backbencher and his role as
Junior Minister in National Security was one in which he seemed to revel more
in the appearances since there was nothing he could fundamentally change even
if he knew how to do it. Now, almost two decades later even as his
boss, Prime Minister Keith Rowley sanctioned the passage of 50,000 careless
Trinidadians to play in Tobago over the Easter weekend, Hinds , on the
orders of Rowley and in his first edict as new National Security Minister has
threatened to create special police squads for public health regulations to make citizens "feel it in their
pockets", as a cover for the government’s role in the post Easter surge of cases.
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| Masmen: Rowley and Hinds. |
Lets track backwards. On Carnival Tuesday 2006, I earned his anger- which he let me know through a third party by sending a message to me, after I took photos of him, wearing an afro wig and bathed in black oil in Tico Skinner’s Carnival band, having a ball. And one of the pics showed him gently painting the face of a female member of his security detail. It raised eyebrows when the photos were published in the T&T Mirror.
Hinds, we all know, is not connected to
the ground even if you (like Nafeesa Mohammed) think he has a good heart. Folks
like him believe they serve the ground best by being an example of a man who
made it to the upper class. That’s been his thinking, even when he studied law
and came back home wanting to do something, he is, like Rowley, trapped inside the
thinking that the man who wears the three-piece suit should be respected. Even after
our revolutionary history of 70’s.
Maybe he means well. Who knows? But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In his days as a backbencher, in the Manning regime, I remember Camille Robinson-Regis coming to his rescue when he made an error in a simple matter of debate in Parliament. She was bright on her feet, far more than he was and rescued her colleagues many times. It is all in the archives at the TT Mirror. I have managed to salvage my two photos of Hinds reading the T&T Mirror on the backbench and entertaining the former San Fernando West MP, the mother of AG Faris al Rawi.
Anyway, Hinds' thinking is limited.
There is a cap on his ability. Lately he has been more vocal in Joint Select
Committees, when he is not on the floor of the Lower House, ranked as perhaps
the best barking pot hound in Prime Minister Keith Rowley’s kennel. He does not
need to be told when to bark. With experience he snarls, at just the right
time.
In a Rowley led government there is no
need for an international level of work/ discourse. There is outright
manipulation and even in the’ “intellectual” part of the job there is stasis,
to the point of gangrene, I daresay. To survive in a Rowley administration,
you just need to know how to play up to him, in the way he knows to
be with his close associates who brought him COVID-19, cos surely his
family did not and sister Sharon and her grandchildren are good at home at the
Diplomatic Centre.
Hinds has evolved into that. Because he
has had no choice. Rowley never embraced him as anything of value, the way he
valued Rowley as a black man. It is simply karma. Hinds, is far removed from
his Black constituency, and is not liked at all in Laventille West, since 2016,
when he rode up the hill on the strength of Desperadoes' Panorama victory which
signaled a revival of the Hill’s prized possession, after more than a decade as
if he was heralding the dawn of a new time claiming "1,2, 3 New We".
The real PNM, on the last standing rock in
Laventille, knows that he is part of the clique that has disenfranchised them.
PNM, they know, is a thing of the past, an uninspiring brand which could only
be revitalized for die-hards with several massive injections of rum and roti,
UNC style. The wise among them no longer expect good ideas to set a
foundation to redress the living anarchy in Laventille West.
That's the bigger picture, however. Hinds
is on his last leg.
Rowley is running out of ideas because he
is, by God's design, under house arrest in Tobago. No one is allowed to go near
him, except his security and I am not sure about the people who cook for him
or put clean sheets or keep the residence clean.
He cannot speak face to face with anyone,
to make subtle threats, to manipulate, coerce, or all in one. And if he is
operating via social media only then he must be very discreet in his language.
That is a steep learning curve for the prime minister, in addition to the fears
of COVID, every morning when he wakes up.
By shuffling around the Ministers after the unexpected death of Franklyn Khan, he has done a few things for political survival. Stuart Young was always the man in the know of all major negotiations that Rowley has embarked on, thereby grooming him not just for the Ministry of Energy, but for the position as Prime Minister. That was obvious in the 2015 election campaign.
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| Young and Rowley, Copyright TT Newsday. |
Having been through National Security and
now Energy and as an understudy in the Office of the Prime Minister, the one
percent- not necessarily of Syrian heritage- is grooming a CEO of the PNM
government. Chinese, with strong links to the mainland, who have been awarded a
small portion of Port of Spain are comfortably poised because China is
T&T's largest creditor. Local Chinese' real estate has increased
exponentially across the island and they are very much an underrated factor in
our economy, underground or otherwise. T&T is in it so deep that we have recently
“signed a non-disclosure agreement for Sinopharm vaccines” from China, which
has not yet been approved by the World Health Organization, WHO.
Young has been part of all negotiations relating
to oil and gas, traveling to Venezuela for the failed Dragon Deal, up front
with the PM in Texas, a close ally of Wilfred Espinet the man who was called in
to dismantle the Petrotrin Refinery and is also there to keep an eye on the
energy companies where the PM has placed his trusted comrades like Newman
George, for example.
If indeed there is intrigue because the financier who ushered in the PNM from opposition and the man with whom Rowley has danced like villagers doing cocoa in the sun, Andrew Gabriel, is now backing Faris al Rawi who was admittedly bubbling in the Lower House four days after Rowley was declared COVID -19 positive, then it only means that another faction of the one percent is vying for their man to be well placed as the CEO of the PNM government. And that they have worked together, successfully, for the outcome of the 2020 General Election. Gabriel gained some extra experience in Guyana while there for the March 2nd , 2020 General Elections, leaving just before the borders closed, like an employee of the Elections and Boundaries Commission, EBC.
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| Faris al Rawi. |
Everyone resident in any part of Trinidad
will know there has been an unprecedented influx of Syrian nationals. They are
mostly men who pitch gyro and fast-food stalls throughout the island. Very much
unlike the Venezuelans, many of whom are qualified professionals doing hard labor
for small money, these are well appointed by comparison. No longer will local
Black henchmen be needed, as it was in the days of the old man Anthony Sabga,
for protection against extortion.
Neither, by the way, will Trinidadian women and children languishing in Syrian Refugee Camps be allowed easy entry into the country, by the way.
Add the Syrians and the Chinese who are
highly visible, but untouched, to the Venezuelans and see the changing national
insecurity landscape. The only benefit is the strengthening of the alternative
economy. Note also to whom foreign exchange is readily available without
question as containers of goods, many non-essentials, are still shipped from
China and the great grandchildren of the late Naim Sabga are importers of
almost everything they sell.
In that brief sitting of the Lower House,
the first after Rowley tested positive, which lasted less than two hours
because of an Opposition boycott, the body language of both Faris and Stuart
was very different. But there was enough hubris in the room, albeit
petty, to make you see how easily the disparate group of Rowley loyalists, who
were groomed not as a team but via the divide and rule method, would easily
crumble.
Whatever semblance of a team they had among themselves would have deteriorated after a year of Zoom meetings and not even a social distanced cabinet meeting like there is a social distanced Parliament. The inner cabinet, they knew, in any event, was meeting all along. The rest of them, like Hinds, are only there to keep up appearances.
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| Penny, standing and Camille, in better days. |
That's why, try as hard as she wants Penny
Beckles, who is likely to take up the mantle of the diehard PNMites, does not
stand a chance at the leadership, even though Rowley would have called her back
home, ostensibly, for the job, at the same time cutting her down when she had
ascended to President of UN Women within the United Nations when she served as
Ambassador. At that time, he did not want to win the 2020 elections and it was
evident in his body language on election night. He would have resigned and
Penny would have taken the responsibility of the party in Opposition.
The Office of the Prime Minister, now, is
a playground for quite a few unqualified people. Rowley, one suspects, did not
have much to say about its composition. He allowed Andrew Gabriel the luxury of
feeling like a White House Intern, disrespecting and eliminating a cadre of
trained professionals in the process.
With all that, as described above, where
is Hinds?
You tell me. None of the names I have called above have a genuine care for the thousands of boys who are falling through the cracks. Foster Cummings, a rising black man in the PNM, was given that responsibility. But he too will use it as a means to elevate himself further, now that he occupies the position of General Secretary of the ruling party and has been promoting himself on Facebook since he became the La Horquetta/Talparo MP, not because he is well loved by all, but because he, in a few months, spent more money than Jerlean John did in two and a half years, while at the same time the foundation of the DSS was growing, until they became overconfident a few months after the elections and was dismantled. Cummings will be the face of the forever Black caucus which is encouraged in the PNM to keep up the front.
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| Cummings, left, and Hinds |
The battle for leadership of the PNM will
be between two powerful sets of people with lots of money, who have massive
projects in their vision, none of which involves improving the standard of our living.
Your prime minister, being under house arrest, will now for the first time have
to think and work his way out of the mess he has made, even with the
constitutional mess in Tobago made worse by reports that the Leader of the
Tobago Council of the PNM Tracey Davidson-Celestine, "is not listening to
him".
There on the sister isle, can you imagine
driving through Blenheim every day and passing by the official residence
knowing the money it took to build and knowing that your prime minister is only
there during a normal working day because he has covid-19? And because he has no
choice? They know the island is a playground for him, where he can have
backyard jams of all kinds.
Blenheim House has quickly become a place
of not good repute. Because the average Bagonian can't even make an appointment
to see Rowley during his longest ever stay on the island, in the past six years
at least. If that isn't house arrest, by the grace of God, then what is?
Under house arrest, the least he can do is
juggle the people he thinks are loyal to him, as incompetent as they are. There
is hardly anyone of quality who will volunteer to become part of the Rowley
Cabinet.
In the meantime, self-proclaimed Rasta man Hinds, who needs security to go to his constituency, will inherit a jep nest of nasty politics in the TT Police Service where concerted efforts to remove Gary Griffith as top cop are underway. The systemic removal of Mark Hernandez from SORT, has pulled the rug from under Griffith, a mere three months before his contract as top cop ends. Hernandez was also popular among police officers to replace Gary, incidentally.
On Wednesday morning, in his first appearance as the new MONS, Hinds was already interfering in police business, without discussion with the top cop, hinting at the creation of special squads in each Police Division to penalise those who breach the regulations.
