A Triumph of Indecency... (From a Jack to a King)

The results of the polls in Chaguanas West does not auger well for the future of Trinidad & Tobago especially if this is the mess we are prepared to make of the franchise. Make no mistake, what happened in that election could well spell the beginning of a new grab for power among the elite, where candidates are bankrolled and placed in the House of Representatives as bargaining chips to negotiate directly on their behalf and in their interests. Benjamin Franklin said that when the people realize that they can vote themselves money directly from the treasury it would herald the end of the republic, and I fear with the validation that took place here through the slickest of cash fueled campaigns, one does not have to peer too far into the future to see where else this goes. Politics as sport? Groomed and primed, those possessing raw political talent could be the new collector's item, to be owned and even traded as required. Does anyone really think that Jack did any of this on his own? Please, the man can barely speak, but what he represents is something far more sinister than we dared imagine, the enemy within.

To whom do the people turn if those they elect to make laws turn against them? Section 34 was that question asked and answered, and while that particular attempt at agenda driven legislation may have collapsed, rest assured that with each attempt the parties and personalities engaged will become more proficient until, buried in some apparently innocuous and insignificant legislation will be a paragraph of our undoing, a signing away of liberty and a voting away of our rights.

Far fetched? Where are Ish and Steve now? And what of the little black boys alleged to be rotting away in jail for whom that legislation was supposed to be a panacea?

Regardless of your politics you must know that nothing good can come from this, nothing, and while we may not want to face the reality of what transpired, in this enterprise we may have collectively poisoned our own well. It was celebrated Philosopher Voltaire who said that it is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere, and he could not have been more spot on if he was here, alive and now. In this land of lazy advocates and irresponsible citizens our desire for a fix-all messiah to solve all our problems has delivered us to our ending riding high on the promise of a box drain and a pavement, and a little way farther down the road we will arrive upon it, courtesy of our own selfish immaturity.

If any of this is true, can it be stopped? If it has to rely on the same people who voted for or are celebrating their own demise then no, that would take a personal responsibility we appear to lack on a national level. We have had ample time to fix things, but for fifty one years we've been content to hobble from public drunken holiday to public drunken holiday as we slowly circled the drain. Now all we have left is hope, as in hope we don't end up in a public hospital needing treatment or God forbid hope we don't end up the victim of a crime. We the people of Trinidad & Tobago have failed our nation and our children by this action, and history will call for an accounting as to what drove us to this apparent madness.

Think I am wrong? Read the international news, see what the rest of the world thinks of our foolishness and understand how the world views us now. Sure, they will stick around long enough to know where we are on a map, until our petrochemical value runs out, but after that we're on our own, left to our own devices like the children of the other failed states who, having had their moment in the sun, chose to use it to burn their own civilization down instead.

The people of Trinidad & Tobago supported, rallied behind and elected to Parliament a man of international ignominy and with many, many questions of serious impropriety hanging over his head. We did this sober and with full control of our faculties, unforced and without coercion or duress. The obvious question then that begs to be asked is, what does that say about us as a people?