Pao­lo Ker­na­han

"Any minute now we will be join­ing the may­or of Port-of-Spain, Louis Lee Sing, for his ad­dress to the na­tion." I cer­tain­ly don't think the ra­dio an­nounc­er on i95.5 in­tend­ed it so but it was the first time I'd ever heard of any may­or giv­ing an "ad­dress to the na­tion." Odd­ly enough, that state­ment cer­tain­ly echoes the may­or's ten­den­cy to ar­ro­gate a broad range of pow­ers up­on his of­fice.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, Mr Lee Sing on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions has been forced to con­cede that many of his pub-lic pro­nounce­ments have been all blus­ter with no leg­isla­tive spine. His lat­est ob­ses­sion is glass bot­tles in the city of Port-of-Spain. This week the may­or (I can­not stress enough that it would be in his best in­ter­est to stop say­ing "mare") held an ex­haus­tive and ex­haust­ing news con­fer­ence, fit to tire even the most in­quis­i­tive jour­nal­ist.

Mr Lee Sing de­vot­ed a con­sid­er­able amount time of­fer­ing ex­cerpts of re­ports and thin anec- dotes to sup­port his call for a ban on bot­tles for Car­ni­val in the cap­i­tal city. Now this was time poor­ly spent, for I can think of few peo­ple who can of­fer up a con­vinc­ing ar­gu­ment against a bot­tle ban. The may­or cit­ed a cir­ca 1970 ar­gu­ment in favour of the abo­li­tion of bot­tles in Port-of-Spain, his in­tent seem­ing to con­vey, "Hey, so I'm not so fool­ish af­ter all! Some­one else thought of this!"

For my part, I nev­er took is­sue with the sug­ges­tion. In­deed, I whole­heart­ed­ly en­dorse it. Back at the in­ter­minable news con­fer­ence, Mr Lee Sing de­cid­ed that just in case you still think him a fool for hav­ing ad­vanced the idea of a bot­tle ban, here's some grip­ping tes­ti­mo­ny from a woman who has in­ti­mate ex­pe­ri­ence with the equal op­por­tu­ni­ty dis­po­si­tion of a glass bot­tle. The young woman re­count­ed for the me­dia the trag­ic cir­cum­stances which, fol­low­ing an en­counter with an un­guid­ed glass bot­tle, led to the loss of vi­sion in one eye.

It is a tru­ly trag­ic sto­ry but I am doubt­ful that any­one, pri­or to hav­ing heard that sto­ry, was un­aware that a bot­tle as a pro­jec­tile can be an un­pleas­ant thing. Again, I am think­ing, the may­or is preach­ing to a frus­trat­ed choir. If you add this cam­paign to the list of ini­tia­tives ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sued then aban­doned like a one-night stand by the may­or, it does sug­gest a trou­bling pat­tern on his part. Are we deal­ing here with a sim­ple­ton thrust in­to a po­si­tion for which he is woe­ful­ly ill-equipped to nav­i­gate?

Mr Lee Sing's glar­ing lack of un­der­stand­ing of the leg­isla­tive pow­ers avail­able to the city coun­cil or the laws that gov­ern (or fail to as the case may be) the many con­cerns which he vo­cif­er­ous­ly cham­pi­oned does raise some ques­tions about his com­pe­tence to hold of­fice. Park­ing, noise, busi­ness­es in Wood­brook, Wasa vs the city cor­po­ra­tion, Dig­i­cel imax vs the city, Louis vs traf­fic light va­grunt...the may­or has tak­en a beat­ing on them all.

Now the fi­nal in­sult: "Glass bot­tles ok!" bleats the head­line. In oth­er words, "Keep yuh a-- kwart, Louis!" Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki puts the is­sue to rest by stat­ing that im­ple­ment­ing such a ban is a tad more com­pli­cat­ed than call­ing a news con- fer­ence and chant­i­ng it in­to a mi­cro­phone. Lis­ten­ing to this news con­fer­ence on the ra­dio, I thought to my­self, "Man this guy is re­al­ly crazy like a crack­house rat..." Then some­thing else dawned on me... Per­haps the may­or knew all along that he does not have the le­gal au­thor­i­ty to make any of the changes which he has ad­vanced but he does not give a sh--!

He is the one who has to lis­ten to the Wood­brook res­i­dents com­plain ad nau­se­um about in­ces­sant clash­es be­tween the barfly cul­ture and peo­ple who just want to live in peace. Can you imag­ine what it is like to have to live with the con­stant noise of row­dy night­clubs and bars? How would you cope with be­ing threat­ened with an a-- kickin' when you plead with limers to not park in front of your dri­ve­way be­cause you have "a sick" (you'd bet­ter come with a good ex­cuse oth­er­wise ex­pect to be blocked in)?

How about hav­ing some sloshy drunk peein' on your foot at six in the morn­ing as you come out to col­lect your al­ready pee-soaked news­pa­per? These are the hu­man prob­lems that con­front a may­or who has es­sen­tial­ly be­come an ad­vo­cate in of­fice. All that Mr Lee Sing seems em­pow­ered to do is stim­u­late pub­lic de­bate about these im­por­tant mat­ters through the ap­pli­ca­tion of in­trin­si­cal­ly flawed strate­gies.

The may­or at his news con­fer­ence about bot­tles and every­thing else re­al­ly is say­ing to us all, must we con­tin­ue to be a law­less so­ci­ety? Must the suf­fer­ing of many con­tin­ue at the plea­sure of a few? Why is it that the most ba­sic stan­dards of de­cen­cy as a so­ci­ety we seem ab­solute­ly in­ca­pable of achiev­ing? In most mod­ern cities the sale of bev­er­ages in glass bot­tles at ma­jor pub­lic events is un­heard of. At the Su­per Bowl you can pur­chase all the beer you want in the soft­est of cups. At Mar­di Gras in New Or­leans its beads, boobs and red cups. For those who are spilling out of road­side bars there, you are in­vit­ed to pour your drinks in­to non-lethal cups.

You should al­so know that if you at­tend foot­ball games right here at home at most venues on­ly canned bev­er­ages are sold. In this coun­try, of course, adopt­ing some­thing so com­mon sense is like teach­ing a brand new sci­ence. Giv­en that there is no short­age of dullards in Trinidad, it was no sur­prise to hear call-ins to the talk shows, "Like Carib doh like dat scene coz it will cost dem too mucha mor­ney to put cyan. But say wha...dem rich...I gorne." Well a lit­tle bit of ra­dio can be a dan­ger­ous thing.

The Carib Brew­ery has al­ready in­di­cat­ed that it would be more than hap­py to sup­port the ini­tia­tive by pro­vid­ing canned beer. It al­so makes sense for Car­ni­val in par­tic­u­lar be­cause canned beer chills faster than beer in a bot­tle. Alu­mini­um is a bet­ter con­duc­tor than glass, which the­o­ret­i­cal­ly should lead to faster sales in­stead of "Ah now put doze een to cole, yuh want it hut?"

It is eas­i­er to de­monise the may­or of Port-of-Spain rather than recog­nise that as a so­ci­ety we have a vi­o­lent aver­sion to do­ing to right thing. I nev­er thought I'd hear my­self say­ing this but Louis Lee Sing is on the mon­ey with this one. On an­oth­er mat­ter, I lis­tened to the may­or's ca­lyp­so for his ra­dio sta­tion's an­nu­al com­pe­ti­tion and I have to say he is eas­i­ly the worst singer ever to white-knuck­le a mi­cro­phone. If on­ly we had a may­or who would cam­paign against that kind of in­jus­tice.