Like so many others, I tried to hurry home last night to hear Jack respond to those who dared to imply corruption in the "incorruptible" and sack the seemingly "unsackable," but was impeded along the way from Port-of-Spain by the four-mile long traffic from Claxton Bay to Chaguanas, the snail-pace precipitated by the typical Trini expectation for blood and gore whenever there is a traffic pile-up.
In the interim, I had turned on the radio, only to hear the voices of novices, evidently so in their staccato inarticulateness; possibly knee-jerk political aspirants looking for a little visibility in the absence of more seasoned campaigners who chose to stay away from the event.
When I finally reached home, I hoped to feel some respect, indeed some kind of bizarre admiration for this much-maligned politician. Instead, I saw a frail figure enmeshed in a web of contradictions, loosely garbed in a yellow UNC shirt proclaiming his loyalty to a party and government which had just "dumped" him, sweating and looking frail and weak when only yesterday "he bestride the narrow world like a Colossus"(Julius Caesar), and trying desperately to defend the "indefensible."
But most tragic of all was his dreaming of a comeback as a UNC candidate after his resignation as MP for Chaguanas which would rely on the endorsement of those who just succeeded in getting rid of him!It's all illusion, nothing but a drowning man clinging to a straw!
Jack's sudden demise makes me wax Shakespearean, thinking of how "noble" is man but nothing but the "quintessence of dust" (Hamlet) or how when we have fallen from grace, our garments cling to us "like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief" (Macbeth).
Time and destiny move on and we all have got to answer, but what will we be able to say when we are called to do so? Will we be able to confess that we have never deliberately tried to hurt our brother and that we have used our capacities for the good of mankind? It's the only claim we can make if our life is to appear worthwhile, here and beyond! Everything else is dust!
Dr Errol Benjamin,
via e-mail