David E Bratt MD

There are far too many weeks now when one won­ders what sort of coun­try one is liv­ing in, when one's fear for the fu­ture when the oil and gas mon­ey, that buffers our faults and soft­ens our mis­takes, is gone, and this past week was one of them. The usu­al sense of un­ease that was ex­ac­er­bat­ed in the dy­ing days of the Man­ning regime, by the con­stant crime and cor­rup­tion, con­tin­ues un­abat­ed af­ter two years of the PP coali­tion. The crime prob­lem con­tin­ues. Noth­ing has been done about past cor­rup­tion and there is a grow­ing be­lief that the scep­tics who bold­ly say "not a man ever make a jail in T&T for white-col­lar crime" are cor­rect. Too much co­coa in the sun. Busi­ness, de­spite the grow­ing num­bers of ex­pen­sive cars on the roads (ac­quain­tances glee­ful­ly tell me that new car sales and prices are up), ram­pant re­al-es­tate sales and chookup malls, con­tin­ues to com­plain that the mon­ey not mov­ing. Po­lit­i­cal­ly, one mem­ber of the coali­tion, a very ju­nior one, but one which rep­re­sent­ed labour, is gone, even if its for­mer leader has de­cid­ed to stay around for the ride. That of it­self cre­ates con­fu­sion. On­ly in T&T can a po­lit­i­cal par­ty re­sign from a gov­ern­ment and its main pa­tron refuse to de­part with them. Is this a trick? Is he a spy for labour?

To make things worse, the Prime Min­is­ter has just made some changes to her Cab­i­net that de­fy ex­pla­na­tion. For­get the jokey num­ber of min­is­ters and the un­at­tain­able Min­istry of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion. She has re­moved the re­spect­ed brigadier from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and re­placed him with a gen­tle­man who has just re­signed from FI­FA af­ter wide­spread al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, FI­FA it­self now un­der sus­pi­cion for award­ing the next two World Cups si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly to a cou­ple of coun­tries which con­tain noth­ing of note, foot­ball-wise, but which do con­tain sand, sun, lots of mon­ey and not much of a le­gal sys­tem. Mr Warn­er is rou­tine­ly de­scribed in the me­dia as "hard-work­ing." Hard-work­ing he may well be, but to what avail? What has he ac­tu­al­ly done be­sides pave pri­vate roads and give press con­fer­ences and promis­es? What hap­pened to the fa­mous PH scheme? To the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route ini­tia­tive? To the an­nu­al flood­ing in Wood­brook? To the Point For-tin high­way? He should right­ly be called "Mr Promise."

The PM re­places the com­pe­tent, hard-work­ing and pas­sion­ate Ver­na St Rose-Greaves in the Min­istry of Gen­der Af­fairs, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, who in one year was able to do what oth­ers could not in ten years-get the Chil­dren Bill passed in Par­lia­ment-with a stranger to women's and chil­dren's so­cial prob­lems.

There goes the gen­der pol­i­cy, said one com­men­ta­tor. And the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty, I would add. And any hope that there was for young peo­ple. Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar may al­so have just lost the sup­port of many of the women's or­gan­i­sa­tions that she came from and that were amongst her staunchest sup­port­ers, and they are no fat-ar­se brigade. Else­where in the week, we had a num­ber of ob­ser­va­tions, hal­lu­ci­na­tions even, that trig­gered off ex­cla­ma­tions of sur­prise. Where else but in T&T you could stop a fete in the mid­dle of a for­est at 2 o'clock in the morn­ing and have peo­ple com­plain­ing? And have the vice-chair­man of the Ch­agua­nas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty that gave per­mis­sion for the fete to de­clare that they have no prob­lem with noise pol­lu­tion from the fete. "Who you pol­lut­ing out in the wilder­ness?" he is sup­posed to have ex­claimed. "You not dis­turb­ing neigh­bours!" What a promise for eco-tourism in Tuck­er Val­ley.

On­ly in T&T would you have a chil­dren's hos­pi­tal be­ing built ten miles from an­oth­er half-emp­ty chil­dren's hos­pi­tal, one still un­able to have its full com­ple­ment of doc­tors, nurs­es and tech­ni­cians. On­ly in T&T would you have the Health Min­istry in­tro­duc­ing a new vac­cine to try to pre­vent dis­ease in the fe­male pop­u­la­tion some­time in the fu­ture, at a time when there is no po­lio vac­cine and no sin­gle dose measles-mumps-rubel­la vac­cine in the health cen­tres to­day. On­ly in T&T could you have a wall proud­ly be­ing built around a hear­ing as­sess­ment cen­tre to cut down on the sounds of traf­fic so that hear­ing-im­paired peo­ple could get test­ed for hear­ing loss. In case no one knows, peo­ple are test­ed in sound­proof booths, not in open of­fices with a wall around them. You must have ab­solute si­lence to be able to test hear­ing. On­ly in T&T do you have a me­dia un­will­ing or un­able to in­ves­ti­gate these anom­alies but able to de­clare hap­pi­ly that a hos­pi­tal in To­ba­go is to be opened, "to be opened," not opened, but "to be opened," five years late, and to cheer­ful­ly pub­li­cise the launch of the Na­tion­al On­col­o­gy Cen­tre for the sec­ond time in four years at the EWM­SC. We still await the ar­rival of the long-promised lin­ear ac­cel­er­a­tor at the Na­tion­al Ra­dio­ther­a­py Cen­tre in St James, Port-of-Spain. Un­ease, un­easy, un­easi­ness!