SO the gallery is amused as a fully animated Patrick Manning returns to thrill, threats of legal action notwithstanding.
The former Prime Minister, himself no stranger to controversy and who has presided over his share of questionable transactions and schemes, paints scenarios that begs thinking people to at least pause for thought, doesn't he?
This has been the problem with our imperfect system of Parliament, that when the sides change so do the roles of protagonist and provocateur.
When it is all said and done, a large portion of the electorate is happy to be defined in terms of race, and both Parties (PNM and UNC) are happy to parlay that capitulation into bankable power at the expense of real politics and honest governance.
What we get in exchange is cheap theatre, play acting and shirt and tie gang warfare.
To what end?
How long until the side in power, in tipping the State's resources in its favor, tips too far and brings the whole thing down?
The disconnect in the crime and mad spate of murders cannot be allowed in a world of thinking men, but is allowed here because thinking is not a prerequisite to an opinion, membership is.
And what of the center?
What of the people who DO ask questions, to whom neither side is as lilly white as they pretend to be and who want governance to at least make something like sense?
Will their ranks ever swell to the point that it can mount a challenge based on issues?
And if successful, should the first order of business be to sub contract our entire system of law and order and of justice to investigate, prosecute and jail from corrupt Judges and Ministers to public sector workers on the take?
We stand in a gallery of fools really; accusations fly left and right with no resolution, no real follow through regardless of how close we got to prosecution with the Airport scam for example. No one ever is to blame, and the system, while starched sterile and sounding mature, is a play on words and stacked against the people.
It seems to be the instructive lessons of Governance in Trinidad & Tonbago is: when you are stealing, steal enough to cover legal fees, pay offs and graft.
Is there anything like a moral center here?
I don't know.
Like most thinking people I wonder if my best future is not to dust my hands, pack up and leave.
To move to far away shores where the people at least have a clue as to the advantages of living a decent life, of raising children with integrity and moral values.
The exchange rate of gyrating drunk once a year does not seem to be enough of a distraction for the masses now and the current Government is toying with the idea of a second carnival.
Seeing that the population is made up of people easily distracted and who are willing to sacrifice their future to 'tief a wine' now, it seems about right.
Phillip I am sitting here with my sick, fed up ass wondering the same thing. Pack my shit and run from this place. What the hell is going on? I am disgusted!
ReplyDeletePhillip
ReplyDeleteOne thing you learn very quickly in this country is that you can never be “in the middle”. Even foreigners are forced to take sides depending on what they want when they get here and who is in government to give it to them, which is what every Trinbagonian learns from childhood.
We can all feel after some years that the best thing to do is to pack up and leave. But living in someone else’s country is not the same as living at home.
Seems like you stand alone sometimes, especially when some of your mates disappear for their own selfish reasons. But all the great freedom fighters in history have stood alone at one time or another and somehow, their messages always reached the masses and their struggles always produced results.
Patience my brother. You are doing what you do best, opening the eyes of those who really don’t want to see and paving a better road for the generations to come. We must all continue do what you are doing now, working with the children so that they will be prepared to create the kind of earth this was meant to be.
Take care.