Suddenly life has new meaning to me.
It is only a line from a song, yet today it arrives wearing the weight of freedom.
Across Trinidad and Tobago, and now across Reuters and international news headlines, the story reads that Minister of Homeland Security Roger Alexander revoked the Preventive Detention Orders that kept Dominic and Genevieve Hadeed behind bars.
Allow me to strip my own dismay.
Why did it require nearly a month of detention, tribunal review, constitutional litigation, appellate intervention, Privy Council proceedings, medical concerns and international attention before the minister concluded that continued detention was no longer proportionate?
Trinidad and Tobago, what part of this unfolding kakistocracy are we now expected to reconstruct into a reasoned post-mortem and adjudication?
My fellow Trinbagonians… I think we getting a 6 for a 9.
I was very vocal and deliberately unquiet in my previous posts questioning both the legal basis and the merits behind the detention of the Hadeeds. I did not suddenly discover this story because the international media finally found it worthy of publication. I questioned it while the detention was unfolding before our eyes, and I remain just as troubled now that the detention has come to an end.
Now let us examine the back story to the Alexander profile.
Because here is my unabridged version of the Free the Hadeeds saga.
Maybe I have simply lived long enough to witness the rise and fall of people who became intoxicated by the appearance of power. History has never been short of men who announced themselves as society’s protectors, who wielded authority with little restraint, and who eventually discovered that power borrowed from institutions is never the same as power personally owned.
In Trinidad and Tobago we have always known the Bad Johns. Every community had one. The man whose reputation alone could terrorize an entire village, whose name inspired fear long before his presence arrived. Yet time has always had the final word. As we say back home, even Bad John eventually gets boiled down like bhaji.
Which brings me to Roger Alexander.
Much to my own biases and truculence, I have watched Mr. Alexander conduct his public communications, and I have found them wanting in integrated, sophisticated and thoughtful explanation. I should not pretend that I am always a model of eloquence or conversational efficiency myself. My own thoughts often wander before they finally settle where they intended to land. Yet I have been struck by what I perceive as a limited public engagement with the complexities of business, governance, public policy and constitutional consequence.
Yes… you are welcome to call me trifling.
But this story has travelled far beyond the boundaries of Trinidad and Tobago. It has become the subject of constitutional litigation, appellate rulings, Privy Council intervention and international reporting. Political batting has continued from every direction, party stalwarts have remained fixed in their respective corners, and suddenly Roger Alexander is presented as the man who revoked the Preventive Detention Orders and restored the Hadeeds’ freedom.
Permit me to hesitate before embracing that narrative.
I find it difficult to persuade myself that one minister, acting alone, possesses the jurisdictional leverage to command the attention of an entire nation by exacting the preventive detention of citizens in a matter that has now travelled through tribunals, constitutional litigation, appellate courts, the Privy Council and the international press.
Power of this magnitude does not materialize in isolation. It is exercised through government. It is enabled by leadership. It is sustained by institutions. No one Roger Alexander simply wakes up one morning possessing authority of this consequence unless that authority has first been entrusted, sanctioned and politically supported by the executive architecture within which he serves.
The Architecture of Power
The Stickman Theory
Create the public face of power. Allow the nation to associate extraordinary authority with one individual. Let that individual become the visible symbol of the State’s resolve. Then, when legal challenges intensify, constitutional questions refuse to disappear, the courts intervene, the Privy Council becomes involved and international scrutiny grows louder, that same face reappears as the face of release.
Only now, after weeks of detention, tribunal hearings, constitutional litigation, appellate proceedings, Privy Council intervention and international scrutiny, Roger Alexander becomes the public face of mercy. He is the minister whose signature revoked the Preventive Detention Orders and whose name is now forever linked to the Hadeeds’ release.
But have we, as a nation, stopped to ask what this entire exercise has cost Trinidad and Tobago?
Not simply the legal fees, the deployment of State resources, the countless hours of public servants, senior counsel and judicial time, or the inevitable demands placed upon the public treasury. There is another cost that cannot be measured by budget estimates or appropriations. There is the cost to public confidence, the cost to institutional credibility and the cost to the international reputation of Trinidad and Tobago. Those are losses that rarely appear in the national accounts, yet they are often the most expensive of all.
