Why we MUST march....

Political Winter...

These are at once the best of times and the worst of times for Trinidad & Tobago. The best of times because, fifty years into our independence the people are maturing politically, finding their voices  and insisting on their opinions and their right to have and express them. The worst of times because this is happening precisely at the time when the country is laboring under the most undemocratic, anti-civil-rights government it has ever had and the ideologies of freedom and oppression seem intent on squaring off for a showdown sometime soon.

How this is handled will decide political futures. The UNC and the PNM are both at pivotal points in their histories because what is done by whom over the Section 34 hijacking of the legislature is going to decide which party thrives and which fails to survive. The all-inclusive opening up of the PNM is precisely what the doctor ordered and it appears that Dr, Keith Rowley is reading the tea leaves correctly. Faris Al Rawi and the rest of the 'new' PNM is a breath of fresh air and are proving to be the correct counterfoil to the now stale and obsolete 'new politics' of the COP, but while Dr. Rowley is enjoying a rejuvenation of sorts make no mistake, Kamla Persad Bissessar still has all the cards to play. What she does here will determine any future elections as they are hers to win or to lose depending on those choices..

The correct plays for her here are not limited to but includes the following:

- Fire Anand Ramlogan - The entire country sees him as the architect of  the whole Section 34 fiasco as well as other abuses and are uniting in their desire to see the back of him. Firing him will at one time raise the PM's political stocks and silence dissent in her Cabinet, and she would be foolish to try and fight what the electorate is prepared to insist on as an inevitability.

- Fire Jack Warner – No one person galvanizes the nation against the government like Jack and as is clear to see, the honeymoon of the illusion of him being effective in any post is over. Short of the gangster politics of bribes and bullying he offers nothing new, and should she fire him she would reclaim her power and consign her opponents to the political cemetery, at least where the east indian vote is concerned. Jack polarizes the community and gives political detractors relevance; firing him will put a decisive end to that.

- Fire Prakash, in fact fire the whole COP – The Congress of the People is irrelevant and can be considered politically dead. Not even Dr. Rowley and his new PNM are interested in them and firing them all would end the sniping and griping coming from that corner of the room. The COP has no financiers, no constituency to claim and very few members any more. They bring nothing to the table but rancour and it is time to put an end to the charade of the Partnership if the UNC and its leader hope to prosper.

If Kamla were to take this advice she would be able to write the next fifty years of our history in her image and likeness. The estimated thirty five per cent (and growing) 'undecided' floating voter bloc will deify her and put her and 'her' UNC in the stratosphere. If she fails to act decisively she would signal the death of the party and rewrite her legacy to the detriment of all who follow in her footsteps and the game would become Dr. Rowley's to win regardless of what elections are called where and when. My advice to the electorate is to reward what best serves the interest of the country as a whole. If Kamla demonstrates the testicular fortitude to do the right thing as outlined above the floating and undecided voter should support the UNC. If she doesn't, they should give their full and unflinching support to the PNM as one so as to fire those political miscreants themselves and send a clear message as to what is expected of government in democratic T&T.

Failing Grades....

Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court Louis D. Brandeis said “...government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.“

History has taught us that no country becomes a 'failed State' overnight, it creeps up in degrees. Social norms have to be discarded, the population has to be dehumanized and authority and rule of law challenged and vanquished. Based on current trends Trinidad & Tobago is going to be an excellent case study one day and perhaps it may be prudent to document the decline. For a state to fail the people need to lose respect for each other, for every system of governance, for life and death, and, most importantly, for themselves. When life becomes meaningless and the 'other' is seen only in terms of pathways to increase or obstacles to progress there is nowhere left to go but down. Countries like Somalia, Iraq, Syria and Haiti do not happen without the misguided will of a misguided people, and while much of Haiti's woes came as a result of being pressed down by external forces, the destruction wrought on its people were mainly the result of cruel acts perpetrated by those with power over those without, of taking advantage wherever it could be found regardless of the consequences of such actions on others or on the nation as a whole. If this sounds anything like Trinidad & Tobago it is because this is exactly where we find ourselves right now, and where we go from here is anybody's guess.

The continuing and raging inferno that Section 34 has become and the ensuing fall out that seems to be threatening to engulf the entire nation is showing no let up in sight anytime soon, with the leader of the Opposition finding ready comrades in the Joint Trade Union Movement who are mobilizing the population to march in answer to lies, half truths and clumsy cover ups. If the enemy of my enemy can be considered my friend, then this government seems to have made an enemy of the people in two and a half short years. Civil society has weighed in on the issue on the side of the opposition and is drawing the ire of the de-facto leader of the UNC government, it's Chairman and the country's current 'strongman and Minister of Everything Jack Warner. His 'release' to the media that took civil society to task is another one of his 'tongue in cheek while foot is in mouth' silly tantrums and someone ought to tell him how stories that start this way usually end.

The people are upset and rightly so. All systems seem to be failing, and the Acting Commissioner of Police and the Acting President both agreeing to disagree with the rest of the country that the wrong that was done through the legal misuse of Parliament does not warrant further investigation is not making things any easier.

The brewing fiasco of the make work scheme that the legal profession seems to have become since May 2010 has caused the pounding of siege guns by legal luminaries to be heard in court rooms far away from this society as men and women of silk caliber and heavy reputations step into the gayelle. Accusations of questionable briefs and even more questionable ethics are being tossed about, and it may be fair to surmise that the coming storm is not going to be confined to the gutter.

Things are beginning to fall apart. Murder after bloody murder continues to dominate the headlines interrupted only by tales of new violence between people; home invasions, rape and buggery have become common terms and this country is chalking kills that would be the envy of a nation at war. George Washington, the father of modern democracy himself said “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” Trinidad & Tobago seems to be at the mercy of such forces, a victim of government gone wild and governance gone woefully wrong.

Missteps, Excuses & Apologies...

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.

Silver Linings & Just Rewards....

In a what can only be a demonstration of love and caring and quite possibly based on the belief that 'what the eye doh see the heart doh feel,' National Security Minister Jack Warner has decided to keep the disturbing murder and violent crime statistics from the people for their own good. And in what can further be described as a wonderful and selfless gesture on his part and what was clearly no easy decision to make, instead of worr

ying the people needlessly over crime plans and statistics the minister unilaterally decided in a demonstration of clear and decisive leadership to do all the worrying for the citizens and cut them out of the loop. Want to see leadership in action? Check this out for good measure. The only things that were keeping the government from getting down to making a real dent in the fight against crime were clearly the chain of command, the law and the separation of powers, so what did this powerful and charismatic (I want to say maximum but I am afraid of making him blush) leader do? He ignored the rules completely so as to have his way as any determined and strong leader would.

Surely this is an act for which this man must be commended and I daresay we should appoint a committee to deal with him 

properly and in a manner fitting to what he deserves and more. In ancient times conquering heroes were hoisted onto the shoulders of the grateful citizenry and might I suggest we return to those simpler times and have Jack hoisted as well? And surely and based on the symbolism, if the greater the act the higher the hoisting then surely we should be hoisting him up as high as we could. Are there others in this government worthy of a good hoisting as well? Of course. The Attorney General immediately springs to mind and, while he is no Jack Warner, that should not prevent him from being hoisted right alongside him, don't you agree? And to show respect for the whole Partnership concept why not hoist Daaga and Ramadhar as well and for good measure? Just to be even handed so that no one could say we were currying favors there ought to be a hoisting in Tobago too, and if the citizens of the sister isle want to hoist Ashworth Jack for any role he has played in bringing the country to where it is today then I say with lavish applause, hoist away.

One can only hope that this new magnanimous style of governance spreads across the board and include other disturbing issues such as corruption. I mean, aren't we all tired of each new bombshell? Who may have misplaced which piano or which board in Chaguaramans may have gone rogue and is openly flouting appropriation and procurement laws? What does it matter? There are surely psychological benefits to keeping the news happy and friendly and I for one would not mind if all the channels on my television were all Suruj Rambachan and Glenn Ramadharsingh all the time. Think of the entertainment, the hi-jinx those two lovable characters get up to, it's just a thought but one that could surely work.

We are on a good road here and it needs to be highlighted and encouraged. Silver lining politics is more than just a touch of grey if one knows where to look. Take Herbert Volney for example. After being fired the former (now disgraced) Justice Minister and Member of Parliament for St. Joseph Herbert Volney used the budget debate to demonstrate how a real MP serves his community; dealing with issues that ran the gamut from education to sports, crime and traffic, the Minister figuratively combed his constituency in the Parliament and painted a picture of good management that ought to be emulated, and, if this is the result of a good firing then I would like to suggest that we fire them all. There is good in all of this and I daresay we are on solid ground here, so carry on....

Perverting Privilege & Other Jack Attacks...

Where certain politicians are concerned one needs to understand that there is a difference between a debate and an argument with a crazy person. Originally this column was entitled - 'Truthful Fiction & National Lies' where I attempted to deal with statements made in another columnist's offering in which he (let's call him Pete), expressed displeasure with certain double standards (in his view) where government and the media are concerned. I believed the positions he was taking to be dangerous to our freedoms in the long run if left unchallenged, and, cutting a long story short and fitting it in here 'en passant' as a certain MP likes to say, I focused on two of the issues he raised in his piece; the notoriety that a certain former state employee now enjoys in private life, as well as the double standard of the push back (Pete's position not mine) against Jack Warner's use of live television to openly attack a journalist he believes hostile to his government.

Dealing with the first issue first, surely he (Pete) knows that due to the still unanswered questions surrounding her sudden and meteoric rise to stardom and all of the innuendo and intrigue surrounding it left in the public domain in lieu of real answers to those very questions, then surely he must know that there would still be interest in her as a character. Photos of her drinking and partying with government ministers did little to help her cause and may have in fact further fueled the public's interest in her as a  central character in what has been dubbed our local version of 'Sex, Lies & Videotape.' The other issue of Jack's attack was wrong on so many fronts it is almost obscene. Forgetting for a minute that the person he attacked is a practising journalist, his use of his position as National Security Minister to openly 'caution' ANY citizen from a political position should  be grounds for his immediate dismissal and why every single practicing journalist and media worker in this country has not yet 'downed tools' in solidarity remains a mystery to me. To indicate that 'he and they' knew certain aspects of this journalist's personal life including where she lived crossed all lines of decency, smacked of either gestapo tactics or gangsterism and both ought to be publicly rejected by all democratic minded citizens.

Settled there that column was set to run when I was informed that the same Jack Warner had attacked me personally in his budget debate contribution in the House for my having the audacity to share that there were rumors abounding that certain gang leaders in certain 'hotspots' were being paid upwards of twenty thousand dollars to keep the peace. Now I am unsure as to the exact source of his outrage, the rumor itself or me having the temerity to share it, but it does nothing to change the fact that different versions of this story keeps surfacing and at some point we will surely know if there is fire to match all this smoke. Further, if this was an attempt to intimidate me then surely Jack is not as smart as he thinks he is. His position that commentators like myself are negatively affecting the international image of this country by exposing wrongdoing for all to see is laughable, especially when one considers that we have an international icon of corruption, bid rigging and bribery as not only a member of our parliament but a cabinet minister, the very same cabinet that recently used the same parliament to write a law to free men of ill repute wanted internationally for crimes committed in other jurisdictions.

Using Parliamentary privilege to attack those who enjoy no such immunity and so are unable to respond in kind is bullying in every sense of the word and this needs to be addressed. Parliament MUST remain the highest institution on our land, but I would like to suggest that Parliamentary privilege needs to be re-examined and  opened to challenge in a court of law where slander is concerned so as to keep the devious and the uncouth from using that privilege to attack others for cheap political points.

Undoing Excellence... (More Doubles-Speak)

As an opinion writer/columnist/blogger sometimes i find myself in funny, even uncomfortable positions because i am required/expected to deal dispassionately with 'hot topic' issues fairly or fearlessly regardless of relationships or friendships, while many others are not so constrained and free to give liberty to whatever they want to say. Fair enough. This is not the only complication though, as I wear other hats, and one of them in particular and as Chairman of the Jericho Project i am careful not to comment from a personal perspective especially on any member who may have left the group (particularly on negative issues) and tend to ignore any such negatives ascribed to former members so as to keep me the person and me the opinion writer separate (as much as humanly possible) from Jericho so as not to hinder the good work that group does for so many.

That is not always easy.

One of the issues in the national domain that was taking center stage in the discussion and getting lost in the personalities was the 'plannassing' video featuring the son of Education Minister Tim Gopeesingh - Shane Gopeesingh as 'plannasser,' and, the husband of COP stalwart and activist in her own right Kathryn Stollmeyer-Wight - Gregory Wight, cast for these purposes as 'victim.'

Kathryn is also a former member of the Jericho Project, and it is here that I am still trying to remain cautious as to what i can realistically say on the issue, further complicated by the fact that the matter is now sub judice.

In my article "A New Tale of a Strange Land.... (Plannassing for Doubles)" I tried to take an 'every-man's' position on what took place, accepting what was plain to see in the video and also what was said as having occurred by both sides to draw to a conclusion that the whole mess could have and should have been avoided if both sides 'held their corner' as it were. The problem with the 'everyman' view in some situations in clannish T&T is that, even if your intention was not so much to please but to understand everyone, if people are willing to dig into their positions you could end up pleasing no one. Combine that with those with axes to grind that have nothing to do with the issue being discussed and we have a whole new situation, not on the issue being discussed but on the people doing the discussing (i.e. kill the messenger). In my article I acknowledged that others may have intimated that Gregory Wight, in his forty one second rant at Shane Gopeesingh may have used the word 'coolie' in its most derogatory meanings, and Gregory himself has told me that he never did. How do I decide? As I was not there and can only rely on hearsay the original position I took was whether or not you did don't do it as I thought that was the substantive lesson here, but if it came across as me having said that I believe he did say it, as I was not there I cannot so I retract and apologize for that. Kathryn has allowed/facilitated a conversation based on the same hearsay and sees no difference in me sharing what I believed and what she has facilitated/allowed and again, fair enough. Sometimes irony gets lost when we're too close to a situation.

As clarification I wrote a follow up piece entitled 'Rights vs Responsibility' in which I tried to further make the point that where we are is of not as much consequence as how we come to be here in the first place, but by now the banging of drums were drowning out any chance of rational discussion so the substance was lost on those looking to score points, whatever they may be. In the closing paragraph I again weighed the behavior of both men from provocation through escalation to result and came to the conclusion that - “This may well end up being judged on the merits of who was more wrong, but don't be fooled  for a second that either party was right.” I still believe that to be so and I make no apologies for that.........

Duplicity, Double Speak & Doubles...

Speaking during the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) annual post-budget breakfast meeting, Finance Minister Larry Howai said that once negotiations with CLICO policyholders and shareholders are complete, the government will move to consider all its options to recoup the nearly $20 billion of taxpayers' money it spent to save the failed insurance giant.

Read that again, this time slowly so as to understand exactly what is being said and more importantly what is not being said in that statement:

'The government will 'move' to consider' – meaning for all right intents and purposes that the government has not yet actually begun the act of considering but intends to at some future and more fortuitous time, so not really a promise but more of an idea or an item on a wish list. See how that works? This is followed by 'all its options,' suggesting that there are many ways in which this issue can be brought to a satisfactory conclusion when in truth and in fact, as none of the principals have been arrested or charged or even brought in for questioning at this point it is more likely safe to assume that nothing of substance will ever be done about this, and that quite possibly, the greatest daylight robbery ever executed in the history of this country has succeeded. What would prompt the newly minted 'ten million dollar man' to engage in such duplicitous behavior so early in his career as Finance Minister? Could it be that, handed this script to read he actually believes the words that are coming out of his mouth?

As a fully formed cynic where government pronouncements are concerned I see this entire performance as a red herring in a virtual school of red herrings designed to distract the people and throw them off the scent and Larry Howai ought to be ashamed for joining in on this perversion. The real truth is that twenty thousand millions of the people's dollars has been misappropriated by government to cover the tracks of thieves and, to put this shameful act into perspective I thought we could look at what twenty billion dollars could have bought us.

- With a housing shortfall of ten thousand houses or thereabouts, at five hundred thousand dollars for a very nice three bedroom house, five billion of the twenty stolen would have paid for all ten thousand in cash, leaving fifteen billion dollars in change.

- Using the 100 bed Scarborough hospital at five hundred million as a guide (corruption and theft included and accounted for), and based on providing a further thousand beds to our stock, we could have built ten more hospitals for five billion dollars, leaving us roughly another ten billion in change.

- Schools; we seem to always need more schools and at a conservative one hundred million per school we could have built fifty new schools and discarded those in need of repair, leaving us with roughly five billion with which, based on the government's admitted spend of fifty million for the Independence weekend of freeness and festivities, we could have had two years of straight exuberant alcohol soaked indulgence complete with Machel Montano and Kes. Ridiculous? Sure, but no more ridiculous than letting those who looted the treasury abscond with the proceeds while twenty five per cent of our population live below the poverty line, not so?

Until Anand Ramlogan is made to account for his role in the planning and execution of the Section 34 fiasco, until Austin Jack Warner is fired form the Cabinet for, among many other sins, using his office to publicly threaten a journalist, freedom of the press and speech at one go, until Ish & Steve are on their way to the US to face the music, and until Calder Hart, Lawrence Duprey and all of the other highly skilled criminal minds who have looted this country are dragged back in chains this will not be a real country. This is Trinidad & Tobago, a place where it is easier to get distracted and show moral outrage and indignation over a fight by a doubles box than it is to say right, that's it, enough. Want slight pepper with that?

Budgeting....Gangnam Style...

Somewhere between the announcement that Larry Howai was brought on board to introduce deficit reducing austerity measures and the pre-collapse of the government over the Section 34 fiasco something changed, and the budget that was supposed to tighten our belts did anything but. Long on distraction but woefully short on any real developmental substance, the government did what governments under serious political pressure usually do, and that is pander to the most and distract the rest which, for these purposes, includes populous measures such as the removal of value added tax from food and, as a punishment for doing well, a removal of the gas subsidy from premium gas. Personally, I have no problem with either measure as it's what a learned friend of mine referred to as 'left pocket giving to right pocket economics.' Getting the middle class to pay at the pump for the savings afforded to the poor at the supermarket checkout was a master stroke of deceit and I applaud this government for staying true to form. Hidden in this shell game was the continued and massive cost to the taxpayers for rescuing two failed financial institutions while no measure has been put in place to either recover what was stolen or to bring charges against the looters in the first place. That this is a country that punishes the small but rewards the big was again underscored, and while significant measures have been budgeted to keep Laventillians from killing each other, nothing was done (again) about 'white collar' criminals, not the creation of special courts nor the deepening of oversight, not even the deployment of joint police and army patrols in board rooms and state rooms to protect the public from the devious and the determined, crime in this country will continue to remain in the realm of the poor for as long as political power remains the remit of the rich.

The government's idea of stimulating growth involves the 'manufacture' a boom out of thin air by spending money it does not have to build things we do not need, creating temporary jobs and further burdening the state with an increasingly unskilled workforce. Using the same formula that created the American housing bubble (and while Larry did not say this directly it was obviously implied), at some point a miracle will occur that will close the gap between income and expenditure. The Ministry of Local Government will be 'given' four new buildings because obviously that and not the lack of legislation that reforms local government is what is keeping it from performing as it ought to. Despite knowing that the housing shortfall is upward of ten thousand units, the government is going to facilitate the building of one hundred new houses per year utilizing the National Self Help Commission, but who gets this help and where these houses will be built is still a mystery. Instead of being used as a fulcrum to drive the financial sector and set the pace for the delivery of services, First Citizens Bank will instead be sold off through the stock exchange.

With an objective to increase the non-energy share of GDP to 66.0 per cent over the next five years, and while they have have 'identified' a number of areas for growth and investment (such as financial services, tourism, information and communication technology, downstream energy industries, agriculture, creative arts and the maritime sectors) again nothing of substance was outlined to make believers out of us.

GATE will be re-tooled to provide more hairdressers and mechanics, leaving the entrepreneur-ially ambitious to  rightly fend for themselves. Small and micro enterprise development was mentioned in passing using double speak gobbeldy gook that said nothing, demonstrating the lack of any real vision for the development of the people beyond the minimum wage earning stage.

The greatest trick that budgets play is that this money being dispensed from that magical pinata called the treasury does not rightfully belong to the people in the first place, so, not knowing what they're entitled to the people continue to accept whatever they get with gratitude. Perhaps that is the chief reason for keeping them under-educated and off balanced in the first place.