Flags, Pieces of Cloth and other Misrepresentations....

In the movie Swordfish the character Gabriel says to his counterpart Stanley: “Have you ever heard of Harry Houdini? Well he wasn't like today's magicians who are only interested in television ratings. He was an artist. He could make an elephant disappear in the middle of a theater filled with people, and do you know how he did that? Misdirection. What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes.”

Take the firing of (former) Ambassador to the United Nations Therese Baptiste-Cornelis for example; referred to as a 'recalling to headquarters' instead of a dismissal, one is left to wonder to which headquarters was she recalled and where was it located? Is it even on planet earth? Surely as Ambassadorial appointees answer directly to the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister herself is not known to have or operate any  headquarters, this release for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asks more questions than they answer. Was this misdirection? Over to you Suruj.

When Planning Minister Bhoe Tewarie, in his response to the public outcry against the perverse 'imitation' National flags being flown on flagpoles on public buildings claimed that they were just 'pieces of cloth,' was that not misdirection? Because if not, then what is? The accepted definition of the word 'flag' is - 'A piece of cloth, usually rectangular, of distinctive color and design, used as a symbol, standard, signal, or emblem.' When these pieces of cloth, as subjective as they may then be are hoisted and flown on officially recognized and stipulated flagpoles, what are they then? Over to you Bhoe.

Take also the vapse holiday regally granted by the Prime Minister which put everyone outside of the rent-a-crowd and the 'colour me any colour you want once you paying me' crowd into a tizzy. From the business community which was left with short notice and a mad scramble to undo all the plannings and preparations for the hectic first day of the work week, the restaurants, bakeries and caterers who had to dump or give away their preparations, to those reeling from the weekend's disastrous flooding and landslides still caught up in cleaning and repair, the holiday that was held out as a celebration for the Olympic athletes ended up being anything but. To make matters worse the event was so badly handled that the Government had to apologize for omitting and ignoring other members of the T&T Olympic team who were not honoured at Monday’s Piarco celebration, leaving Communication Minister Jamal Mohammed no choice but to say: “We do apologize if the impression was created that we had forgotten or ignored the other athletes.” Now if Monday’s celebration was specially in honour of the man who won the gold medal, Keshorn Walcott, why did the celebration include Njisane Phillip at the expense of the rest who arrived back in the country at the same time? Over to you Jamal.

Requiring much more than spin doctoring, the situation left TTOC general secretary Brian Lewis to fall on his sword and describe the faux pas as “unfortunate and disappointing” and that the TTOC accepted full responsibility. Lewis went on to say that it was because of problems in communication at the airport that only Walcott and Phillip were presented to the huge crowd, contradicting novice spin doctor Arts and Multiculturalism Minister Lincoln Douglas who jumped in and said (as excuse) that some of the T&T track and field athletes had not returned home on Monday but had gone to another athletic meeting overseas, leaving the general public with three versions of what should have been the same excuse to choose from. Was this misdirection? Over to you Lincoln.

To everyone looking on the question that wants to be asked is why the mad rush to celebrate? Was it as some surmise that the medal success was being seen as the ultimate distraction to a people jaded by the antics of the entire government? And if a crushing natural disaster and the winning of a gold medal in the same twenty four hour period isn't enough to distract the people from their disdain for the situation, then what, pray tell, will? Over to you Kams....