Sectionizing.... (Waking Up Time)

History will have no choice but to record the current administration as 'pre' and 'post' Section 34 if for no other reason than to put everything in context if not for posterity, then certainly for clarity. The rush to repeal the controversial legislation once exposed for its conspiracy and indecency, the government's inability to answer simple, straightforward questions as to the who, how and why of the thing, the non-sensical, sometimes self-contradicting pronouncements of the Attorney General, the defeated posture of the Prime Minister, the casual disposal of the comical ex-Justice Minister (for having the stupidity to let the cat out of the bag in the first place) and the macabre, outlandish behavior of the party's jefe and Minister of National Security, Jack Warner all seem to indicate that the party is fractured and hobbling and may well be mortally wounded. Every action taken since the revelation of that fiasco has to be viewed under a microscope to see what is real policy and which is straight up manufactured distraction designed to make it go away.

Take the latest situation with Minister of National Security Jack Warner for example, his spitting fury and his stopping just short of blaming the People's National Movement for actually committing the murder that brought his heavily purchased hotspot ceasefire to an end is as ridiculous as is safe to be, and, if his quasi-apology that included the explanation that the media and the public may have took him 'out of context' made little sense, the outburst that precipitated it all made even less. How the question of context comes to arise when you make a statement and invite listeners to quote you on it, and when they do you say you were taken out of context eludes me, but then I still do not understand how this man comes to be in the Parliament much less the Cabinet in the first place. Seeming to have wed himself to an untenable if not impossible undertaking out of sheer desperation and possibly to distract, he hitched his fortunes to deliverables that could never have materialized in the instant timeframe regardless of the incentives offered simply because human nature does not work that way. Put another way, a model of paying the citizens to behave is unsustainable in the long run and anyone with a little bit of situational awareness would have known that.

They say success leaves clues so surely common sense would have pursued models that have worked in other jurisdictions with similar problems if long term solutions were in fact the goal, not so? But they weren't, not in these times of odor over substance. Success numbers were. Numbers to be used for campaign purposes; if thirty days of no murders reduced the House to desk thumping mayhem imagine the gloating over sixty days, or ninety for that matter, the bragging rights alone would have been worth whatever they were paying these fools to not kill each other, not so? Ministers were heard inviting the public to come stroll through the now purged killing fields, so intoxicating was the idea that the UNC could stop the murders where the PNM failed, in their own stronghold to boot.

Sadly it was not to be, and deflated by the inevitability of a predictable event and embarrassed by his failure, Jack responded in character and  put the blame on everyone else. He blamed the Opposition for encouraging the murder, he blamed the media for spreading opposition lies, he blamed the police for giving the media information on murders and to let everyone else know just who was the big boss in this town, he proceeded to ignore the Constitution and the restraints of the Seperation of Powers that prevents governments misusing the police for political purposes and issued a direct order to 'gag' them from giving the media any further statistics without his say so. That he did not have the authority to do what he did is not the problem, that he does not seem to care is. We are in uncharted territory now, and I daresay civil society needs to be paying close attention to what is being done with our country.