The dec­i­ma­tion of the TOP at the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions is the tip of a po­lit­i­cal ice­berg that has been form­ing for the past 31 months. Com­pound­ing the po­lit­i­cal frac­ture is the con­fir­ma­tion that the Part­ner­ship lacks hands-on un­der­stand­ing of na­tion­als liv­ing out­side of its po­lit­i­cal com­fort zones lo­cat­ed in Cen­tral and South Trinidad. Putting it crude­ly, a dif­fer­ent kind of "bling" is need­ed to gen­er­ate the wow fac­tor in To­ba­go.

The friv­o­lous overuse of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty he­li­copters for per­son­al flights can on­ly be de­scribed as the ac­tions of a "coun­try book­ie" and ex­hibits an over­whelm­ing amount of "nev­er see, come see" be­hav­iour. Things can on­ly es­ca­late out of pro­por­tion and the ad­ver­tis­ing overkill, paid for by na­tion­als, will drown us in fur­ther debt come the lo­cal elec­tions sched­uled for Ju­ly, 2013.

Homi­cides were pil­ing up in Trinidad even as the Prime Min­is­ter and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter were as­sist­ing with the po­lit­i­cal fu­ner­al arrange­ments for Mr Ash­worth Jack and the TOP in To­ba­go. No flow­ers by re­quest. Do­na­tions for pay­ments to ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies and for the pur­chase of he­li­copter fu­el, can be di­rect­ed to the trea­sury.

Lynette Joseph,

Via e-mail