Ralph Premdas

Diaspora and its discontents: A Caribbean fragment in Toronto in quest of cultural recognition and political empowerment

The essay examines the role of The Ontario Society for Services to the Indo-Caribbean Community [OSSICC], a historic organization that sought to assert the dignity and re-discover the identity of Indo-Caribbean persons as a fragment of the Caribbean diaspora in Toronto, Canada. While it points to the achievement in representing the interests of its members for symbolic cultural recognition, it underscored the limitations in the political arena for empowerment, power sharing, and equality in employment opportunities and for an equitable share of the resources of the state. Further, it describes how the ethnic conflict in the homeland persisted in the new site of the diaspora, about lost opportunities for healing, and about inter-generational discontinuities in the reconstruction of the Caribbean self. On a larger scale, the article is about membership and citizenship in the new homeland of the diaspora, its seductions and betrayals in the new frontier of Canadian multiculturalism.

THE GUYANA ETHNIC QUAGMIRE: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS FOR RECONCILIATION

The multi-ethnic state of Guyana, as in many parts of the Third World, was a colonial artifact. State and nation were not co-terminus entities; rather, the colonial state deliberately spawned an ethnically segmented social and cultural fabric. The inherited political institutional apparatus through which state power was contested—specifically, the competitive parliamentary system–-engaged the ethnically based parties in a zero-sum struggle for power. The article offers an analysis of the fundamental issues related to status and recognition of the ethno-cultural communities which express fears of discrimination and domination as well as charges of skewed state policies regarding resource allocation and suggests directions in which change toward inter-ethnic reconciliation and political consociation may proceed.

Ethnicity, elections and democracy in Trinidad and Tobago: Analysing the 1995 and 1996 elections

The paper examines elections in Trinidad and Tobago, showing how they are organised around communal appeals in an environment where inter‐ethnic suspicion is widespread and communal identity is interwoven and institutionalised in organised party politics. The 1995 general elections witnessed the defeat of the predominantly African‐based ruling PNM by the predominantly Indian‐based UNC, the first time an Indian acceded to the prime ministership. Local elections almost a year later reaffirmed the victory of the UNC over the PNM. The Indian ascendance to power seemed to constitute not just a change of government, but an event that threated the fragile stability of the multi‐ethnic order.

Seizure of power, indigenous rights and crafting democratic governance in Fiji

The overthrow of the duly elected government of Fiji in May 2000 illustrates some of the problems of establishing democratic institutions in deeply divided states. In part, while the Fiji case suggests the need for consensus political systems of powersharing requiring special kinds of institutional arrangements which deviate from standard Western zero‐sum adversarial parliamentary models, it points to its limitations in an inflamed communal society. The 1997 constitution incorporated several consensus mechanisms and institutions that attempted to contain the centripetal forces of division and restore stability. However, it was erected on a society that was still deeply at odds with itself. The promise of the 1997 Constitution was located on a minefield of unresolved underlying problems.

Social justice and affirmative action

ABSTRACT While the concept ‘justice’ undergirds every discourse on affirmative action, its meaning is feverishly contested with contradictory definitions wielded as battling swords in a zero sum struggle over the distribution of scarce material resources and symbolic goods. In part, the issues have become even more important since the number of states that have now embarked on affirmative action policies have been growing and the results have been diverse. Affirmative action policies have occurred most frequently in internally heterogeneous societies marked by deep ethno-cultural divisions in which one ethnic community has tended to dominate the rest. To overcome inequalities and ingrained segmental prejudices in these multi-ethnic countries that witnessed over the years the cementing of advantages and privileges among certain ethnic groups has been the primary aim of affirmative action policies. Upheavals and ongoing conflicts have generally dogged these experiences, attesting to some successful societal changes in institutions and practices, to winners and losers. In this paper, we examine some of the controversies, especially in relation to two paradigms and perspectives of social justice.

EXCEPTIONAL VIOLENCE: EMBODIED CITIZENSHIP IN TRANSNATIONAL JAMAICA

differences anywhere else. The book’s great weakness is its failure to take account of moral progress. General agreement on ethical judgements leads to the adoption and enforcement of new laws. It builds a floor on which further judgements are debated. Thus, within customary international law, practices involving slavery are now accounted contrary to jus cogens. We have moved on. Ethical judgements have, since the horror of the Second World War, inspired the growth of international human rights law based upon inter-state treaties. It has been an astonishing achievement that is still in progress. As the discussion of initiatives like Professor Zack’s could inspire further developments, her propositions demand respect. Yet, first of all, the existing structure has to be understood. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the first component of the International Bill of Human Rights; the second is the International Covenant of Economic of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; this has been ratified by 160 of the UN’s 193 member states, though not by the USA. It, together with the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and the seven core conventions, is a means of enforcing rights, contrary to the seriously out of date and misleading discussion at pages 154 155 of the book. Human rights are protected when states accept treaty obligations and set up procedures by which they oversee one another’s fulfilment of them. If member states were persuaded of the value of an initiative like Professor Zack’s, it would be possible to draft an additional protocol to the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in order to give better effect to ethical or practical objectives. So the author might, for example, have considered the examination in 2008 of the most recent reports under this convention submitted by the USA (to be found in UN document A/63/18). She could then have moved on to the reports from some other countries. This would have led her to a more truly ‘cosmopolitan’ perspective and have shown that her twelve requirements are no more than preliminary to the real work. One has to judge the ethics of particular actions and particular policies; there can no more be an ‘ethics of race’ than there can be an ‘ethics of class’. For the benefit of those who have studied no Latin, the author might have explained that mores is the plural form of mos, a word that, in the singular, may be translated as ‘inclination’ (e.g. sicut meus est mos Horace), and in the plural as customs or even as norms (describere hominum sermones moresque Cicero). To introduce ‘Mores’ as if it were categorically different from ‘Ethics’ (as in the book’s title) does not help clarify the nature of ethics.

Ethnicity, Inequality and Conflict: An Introduction

This book examines ethnic inequalities in the public institutions of governance in Trinidad and Tobago (hereafter Trinidad) as well as the strategies for managing the communal and inter-ethnic conflicts that such inequalities tend to engender. In what follows, several concepts and themes assume salience: the multi-ethnic state; the ethnic phenomenon; distributive justice and inequality; adaptation of political structures and institutions in democratic governance; the role of symbols of recognition in representation; and strategies of conflict management (power sharing; resource allocation; public policy, etc.). In this introductory part of the book, we explore these ideas and their importance. The overall context is the multi-ethnic condition, which today typifies the social and cultural composition of the contemporary state in both developed and underdeveloped countries, but with the cleavages being found to be more extensive, exclusive, and deeper in the latter.

The Peoples of Trinidad and Tobago: Historical and Constitutional Evolution

Situated in the southern Caribbean just seven miles from Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago is a small twin island multi-ethnic state with about 1.3 million people. Its people have a per capita well-being that has ranked it 49th in the UNDP’s medium Human Development category. Trinidad is the larger of the two islands in terms of both population (1,220,000) and geographical size (4,820 square kilometres), and has a more variegated population of six ethnic communities, while Tobago — with only 51,000 people and 303 square kilometres — is almost entirely ethnically homogeneously Afro-Creole. Until 1888, when it was joined to Trinidad, Tobago was under separate British administration. In Trinidad, two main ethnic groups predominate — Afro-Creoles of African descent and Indians of Asian descent. These communities are of almost equal size (Table 1.1). While the population size of these two major communities is relatively the same, this has not always been the case. Until the mid-twentieth century, Afro-Creoles were the largest community in the country, but thereafter its predominance was steadily whittled away relative to the Indian population, with this fundamental reconfiguration of the demographic mix impacting on the structure of political power.

Partisan Politics, Electoral Systems and Ethnic Strife

In this chapter, we move our analysis away from the symbols of recognition and the formal institutions of the state in the public bureaucracy to the electoral process, which is the arena in which the ethnic factor becomes activated as leadership is recruited and issues and policy proposals are debated. It is within the electoral process that the rival partisan claims for material resources and symbols of recognition are articulated and contested. It is, therefore, essential to examine the performance of the electoral system in practice, especially its role in defining the dialogue that constructs the dynamics of the political arena and that establishes the tone and tensions in the life of the polity. Furthermore, it is in describing and analysing the continuity of successive elections that the main political parties and leaders are best identified and understood, indicating how voters are organized and mobilized, and how competition for the values of the society are represented and waged. Periodic competitive elections offer a rare and valuable occasion for insights into the contours and workings of the political system, addressing, however indirectly, the salient issue of equity and distributive justice.

Modes and Mechanisms of Inter-Ethnic Conflict Management

In this chapter, we address the mechanisms and modes of ethnic conflict management and regulation in sustaining democratic practices in a multi-ethnic environment. From our stock of knowledge on ethnic conflict regulation and management, many practices and institutions are now available that can be applied to ethnic strife. We shall examine specifically a variety of institutional devices and practices in evaluating this prospect for Trinidad.