Fences worth jumping

WAYNE KUBLALSINGH

TO JUMP or not to jump? Not all fences are the same. Following the funeral of Basdeo Panday, I wrote a Facebook post: “TO THE HONOURABLE FENCE JUMPERS. No need to apologise. You distinguished yourself, by finding your way through. Topped up my respect for you. And made my day. Welcome to activist leadership!” This was in response to former president of the Senate Timothy Hamel-Smith and former minister of finance Karen Nunez-Tesheira jumping the rails to present themselves at the funeral of the former prime minister.

But not all fences are the same. And not everyone jumps a fence for the same reason. The ethics of fence-jumping depends on our motives. What is on the other side. A money-making fete? A pay-to-enter football match? To get a freebie? To rob? To save a cat up a tree? To rescue an elderly person in distress? To capture bandits? Here is Hamel-Smith’s WhatsApp response to my post:

“1. Our original proposal was to attend the funeral at the public tent in SAPA car park as published – no invitation required but big screen installed and subject to limited available seating.

"2. ⁠We were directed by 2 sets of police officers to follow the route we took.

"3. ⁠At or before 8 am when we were alongside SAPA, Karen saw Dr Amery Browne in the car park. She assumed he would arrange for the former Senate president to be admitted to attend the funeral inside SAPA building.

"4. We stopped there and Karen stood behind the rail awaiting his completion of a media interview

"5. ⁠Dr Browne ignored Karen and proceeded to another interview.

"6. ⁠After some time elapsed I was informed that the funeral procession was approaching. This may have been close to 8.30 am.

"7. ⁠The traffic wardens directed/guided me to reverse park and we could go over the railings before the procession entered the SAPA car park.

"8. ⁠As events turned out we watched the funeral in the public tent as originally intended – when we entered the tent there were only a sprinkling of the public but it was quite full by the time we left the funeral.”

The honourable fence-jumpers broke no law. They required no invitation. There were outdoor tents designated for the public. They went early, met challenges, and re-routed. With panache! They did not go to steal soursop; they went to pay their respects to a former prime minister.

I have jumped my fair share of fences. I remember crawling under the perimeter fence of the Alutrint smelter compound in La Brea. To suss out the Chinese workers. They say smelter was coming. I had said, any smelter in Trinidad would be deconstructed. It was my job to go and see. Gather information. Through the rain, mud and backward-jooking pikkas. And the same with the half-finished silos, on the port side of the road. I jumped the fence to gather intelligence.

In Parliament, before a joint select committee on smelter, chaired by senator Mary King, the security warned against approaching the chair. But some point made by a proponent of smelter had infuriated me. It was false. I could not let it stand. I broached security and handed a note to the chair. Then apologised profusely to the police.

My great friend, Mr Gopaul, was at Mount Hope Hospital. I met him at our "No Smelter" camp at the UWI St Augustine Campus. He allowed me to place banners on his land alongside the highway. The guard disallowed me from going up to visit. I left. Approached the hospital from the back. Found a disused elevator, stacked with boxes and old folders. I sailed up past the guard, to the floor above his head, spoke to the matron, and met my emaciated, ever-loyal 80-odd-old comrade. For the last time.

I am of the solemn view that TT needs a good dose of activist leadership. How I wish our leaders would jump over unnecessary bureaucratic fences to ease the people, lands and communities of TT! Not hide behind the masks of nebulous formalities. Hemming and hawing, procrastinating, hedging, filibustering, as if they were being asked to unscrew a corkful of blood from their very own veins!

And what about those fences we build around ourselves? The PNM and UNC. The neo-colonial gospelling of the CNN and BBC. Which we imbibe and swear and live by. The hex of consumerism. Which tells us what to eat, wear, taste, what bodies to have. And what values to prefer. And the matrix, from which leaping out seems impossible: religious, political, ideological – I love my imperialist massa – dogmas.

Some fences are worth scaling. The ultimate scale is the ladder of the self. To climb from the fretful, tortured senses; to the mind in control of the senses; to ultimately, the transcendental self, where mind and senses disappear altogether.

One year ago, I met Panday at his home in Bryan’s Gate. On parting, I gave him a blessing. His face softened. “Not sure where God exists,” he confided. I gestured towards his beautiful garden, flowers. “In all this,” I said. “The cosmic, in all this, all of us.” Cosmic consciousness, the essence of fencelessness. I think he was just confirming. For it is the warrior’s happy duty, fate, to "fight" from this detached transcendental self.