KI­TO JOHN­SON

While politi­cians in the re­al world fo­cus on the prospect of an­oth­er world­wide fi­nan­cial cri­sis be­ing trig­gered by prob­lems in the Eu­ro­zone, wor­ry about how to com­bat the rav­aging ef­fects of glob­al warm­ing, and de­cide how best to stop Iran's ay­a­tol­lahs from ac­quir­ing a nu­clear bomb, here in the myth­i­cal land of Silk­dom, the de­bate is oc­cu­pied by no such lofty ideals. And so, as the dead bod­ies once again be­gin to pile up, and as the econ­o­my idles in stag­na­tion, the po­lit­i­cal hi­er­ar­chy's on­ly con­cern over the last fort­night ap­pears to have been with who got silk, who didn't get silk, who gave their silk back, who didn't give their silk back, and who threw a silk pa­ja­ma par­ty at the Hy­att's pool­side. Okay, I made that last bit up, but nev­er­the­less, you get a sense of how non­sen­si­cal this thing is turn­ing out to be.

To wit­ness the con­tin­u­ing fra­cas be­tween the two war­ring fac­tions of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) now re­sort­ing to in­tim­i­da­tion, vi­o­lence and thug­gery against each oth­er-what for­mer PM Patrick Man­ning would re­fer to as "wa­jang be­hav­iour"-is to wit­ness mad­ness in mo­tion. The irony is that a group of peo­ple who are sup­posed to be skilled in ne­go­ti­at­ing and me­di­at­ing on be­half of oth­ers, are un­able to do so amongst their own selves. How can the Gov­ern­ment, or any­body else for that mat­ter, take se­ri­ous­ly any union of­fi­cial who is seen wield­ing a piece of two by four on the six o'clock news? Add to this, the on­go­ing spats at both the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School and the AS­JA Girls' Col­lege-where, com­pared to the ac­tions of both sets of par­ents and teach­ers, it is the Stan­dard Fives who emerge with the most cred­it-and Trinidad & To­ba­go is be­gin­ning to re­sem­ble a na­tion suf­fer­ing a col­lec­tive men­tal break­down.

It is a cry­ing shame that a na­tion that once pos­sessed gift­ed minds such as Er­ic Eu­stace Williams, CLR James, Lloyd Best, VS Naipaul, ANR Robin­son, and Bas­deo Pan­day, now can­not even find suit­able peo­ple to run a Par­ent & Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion with­out it de­gen­er­at­ing in­to bac­cha­nal and melee; much less a trade union, or in­deed the coun­try as a whole. Af­ter 50 years of in­de­pen­dence and self-rule, is this re­al­ly the best that we have to of­fer? This coun­try used to be known the world over for be­ing able to punch above our weight in any num­ber of are­nas, now we tend to be known for the likes of Jerome Isaac-the man charged with first de­gree mur­der in New York af­ter set­ting a woman on fire, cor­rup­tion scan­dals in­volv­ing Jack Warn­er, and Michael Jack­son's dis­graced doc­tor. Nev­er­the­less, while our bat­tered in­ter­na­tion­al im­age is in need of ur­gent re­pair, it pales in­to in­signif­i­cance when com­pared to the restora­tion job that is re­quired at home, where we seem to have lost all sense of iden­ti­ty and pur­pose.

But, ruled by an en­tire po­lit­i­cal class that has long since ex­ceed­ed its sell-by date, and who is bereft of any mean­ing­ful ideas, it is hard to see a way out of this mess any­time soon. In the ab­sence of re­al lead­er­ship and sound plan­ning, gim­mick and to­kenism have filled that void; with the per­vad­ing ide­ol­o­gy seem­ing to ques­tion why we need to teach a man to fish and take con­trol of his own des­tiny, when we can give him a fish every day for the rest of his life and make him de­pen­dent on the Gov­ern­ment for his very ex­is­tence. Thus, the politi­cians throw good mon­ey af­ter bad on any num­ber of half-baked ini­tia­tives in the hope of a healthy re­turn at the bal­lot box come elec­tion time. It is as if our lead­ers ex­ist in a par­al­lel uni­verse to the one which we in­hab­it. How else then would you ex­plain that as the mur­der toll was ap­proach­ing nigh on two dozen in less than three weeks, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al had "ad­vised the Law Re­form Com­mit­tee to pre­pare and put out a Green Pa­per for pub­lic com­ment on how the sys­tem of grant­i­ng the (silk) award should evolve."

It begs the ques­tion: Any chance of a fire­tuck­ing green pa­per on polic­ing and law and or­der, that for in­stance looks at boost­ing up the in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ties and man-pow­er of the Po­lice Ser­vice, mak­ing the job more at­trac­tive to high­er-cal­i­bre lo­cal can­di­dates, re­form­ing the ar­cha­ic crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and se­ri­ous­ly tack­ling the bour­geois Mafiosi re­spon­si­ble for im­port­ing the drugs and guns in­to this coun­try? Every 13-year-old in the land now has a gov­ern­ment-spon­sored lap­top, while a po­lice de­tec­tive, with all the so­phis­ti­ca­tion of a clip­board and Bic ball­point in her hand, scratch­es her head in be­wil­der­ment when ques­tioned on an in­ter­na­tion­al doc­u­men­tary as to the num­ber of mur­ders she was cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing, and replies: "Ah lost count yuh know." The oust­ed PNM has been em­bold­ened by this cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion's in­abil­i­ty to even or­gan­ise a free drinks lime at Carib's brew­ery in Champs Fleurs, and has come out all guns blaz­ing in the New Year.

But while the pri­ma­ry role of any op­po­si­tion in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety is to check and coun­ter­bal­ance the Gov­ern­ment's pow­er, it must al­so en­sure that it of­fers the peo­ple a cred­i­ble al­ter­na­tive to the sta­tus quo. But, see­ing most of the same faces who were privy to the whole­sale mis­man­age­ment and ar­ro­gance that came to char­ac­terise the Man­ning years still peer­ing out from be­hind the bal­isi­er on the op­po­si­tion bench­es, cred­i­ble al­ter­na­tive they most cer­tain­ly are not. For if this Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship make-up side has taught us any­thing, it must be that jump­ing up and down and scream­ing loud­ly from the side­lines is in it­self no guar­an­tee of an abil­i­ty to ac­tu­al­ly play the game.