The cel­e­bra­tions for our 50th In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary and Keshorn?Wal­cott's Olympic glo­ry are over. Both oc­ca­sions, no doubt, gave the na­tion rea­sons to cel­e­brate. Did we, how­ev­er, have to have so many pa­rades (cha­rades as one writer put it)? A cou­ple less could have gone to fix­ing and clean­ing some drains/rivers to al­le­vi­ate the next round of flood­ing which will al­ways be with us, un­like the fleet­ing ex­cess­es we have over the past cou­ple of weeks.

Was there a bal­ance in the ex­cess­es against what could have been done with the vast amount of monies spent? Such was the overkill of these cel­e­bra­tions that one is left to pon­der on the amount of mon­ey that was wast­ed due to the many cel­e­bra­to­ry func­tions and pa­rades and shows that were held. Not to men­tion the loss of many hours of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty (pro­duc­tion, one of the watch­words of our na­tion's mot­to, cer­tain­ly was thrown out the win­dow).

And then there were the ex­cess­es of fire­works. Again, couldn't a por­tion of the monies spent on this use­less, an­noy­ing and mo­not­o­nous ex­cess have been used in the de­vel­op­ment/al­le­vi­a­tion of our hu­man needs? There has to be a bal­ance.

P King

Port-of-Spain