This is a plea to the po­lit­i­cal par­ties who turned the peace­ful at­mos­phere in To­ba­go in­to the worst kind of hell. I've nev­er heard so much noise and bachan­nal (even at Car­ni­val ) as this week­end. I wish the Prime Min­is­ter and Mr Row­ley and their fol­low­ers had stayed in Trinidad and left the TOP and PNM to run their own cam­paigns for, quite hon­est­ly, I don't think you helped but hin­dered both par­ties. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we do not take any­thing se­ri­ous­ly; every­thing is turned in­to a fete.

What does big ma­co trucks and loud mu­sic have to do with elect­ing peo­ple to of­fice? I think it turns a lot of peo­ple off; I know it turned me off. I don't see that in elec­tions in oth­er coun­tries! And we're hop­ing for first world sta­tus? We have to stop be­hav­ing like the worst third world peo­ple! De­fac­ing the streets with slo­gans– isn't that il­le­gal?

I bet if I start­ed writ­ing stuff on the road the po­lice would be there in no time to stop me so where were they when all this was go­ing on? And isn't there a noise lim­it? If we don't en­force the rules, how can we hope for a crime-free, well-be­haved so­ci­ety? Or is that just a pipe dream? I can hard­ly wait for to­mor­row for all this to be over so we can get our is­land back.

Jean Barnes

To­ba­go