Dear Editor,
Say what you want about Patrick Manning, but he had a plan for this country that was progressive. While many of his projects were mired in controversy regarding corruption, the things that he was trying to achieve were still beneficial to our country in some way. This can probably be best seen in the construction of the government campus and the relocation of the Office of the Prime Minister, both of which were due to logistical reasons, but the latter of which had greater meaning in our national identity as well. Removing the Prime Minister’s office from a building with colonial connotations to a modern one was symbolic of a nation leaving its colonial roots in the past as it forged ahead with a new identity towards a future guided by our own hands.
This is why it was unfortunate that after Kamla Persad Bissessar reaffirmed the sentiments of her predecessor in continuing to keep the Office of the Prime Minister in its new location, Keith Rowley would opt to return to Whitehall simply so that there could be some poetic symmetry in the name he chose to title his autobiography. Of course, It is even more disappointing now, as Keith Rowley bellows on the political stage about wanting to remove symbols of our colonial past, but chooses to occupy a building that remains one of the most enduring legacies from that era when a brand new alternative was created for this express purpose.
What is more interesting is that Keith Rowley seems keen on erasing iconography from our Spanish history, but not so much from the British, which could be argued was the more egregious to our people, mostly because the majority of our lineage in Trinidad does not date back to a time before 1796. As such, it is somewhat baffling that the current PNM government have taken such a drastic stance whence it comes to the image of the Spanish ships that brought the first European settlers to our shores, but not with any of the items of British symbols, such as the Helm which represents the British crown, that may be more traumatic to our history.
Replacing the British helmet with the steelpan, which even from an artistic point-of-view makes more sense as it would be directly under the Coconut tree, also opens up space on the shield for the tassa drum, acknowledging the multiculturalism of this country. But somehow I don’t think that this was a priority in the mind of Keith Rowley when he was coming up with this idea. Instead all that he has presented is an empty platitude meant to silence the mob who seem not to notice the reverence for which Keith Rowley and the PNM have for our colonial past and how much taxpayer dollars are spent in preserving this history for generations to come. Because for as long as the seat of the highest offices of the land such as the Prime Minister, President and Parliament still occupies the spaces left behind by our colonial forefathers, then this iconography will remain rooted in our culture as a reminder of the past, rather than a vision that reflects either the present or the future.
Best regards,
Ravi Balgobin Maharaj