Clevon Raphael

In what can on­ly be de­scribed as a very scathing but nev­er­the­less a re­al­i­ty trip in­to our po­lit­i­cal cul­ture, Tony Fras­er has delved in­to this thorny sub­ject with clin­i­cal pre­ci­sion even though I doubt that he could ever achieve what the ba­sic mes­sage on the top­ic con­veyed–cit­i­zens must now take up the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to trans­form that cul­ture.Two points stand out glar­ing­ly: first, I don't think he would ever see that quan­tum change; and sec­ond, if I may say so, cit­i­zens are pow­er­less to make that change.

Al­though the ar­ti­cle has all the hall­marks of a cyn­ic, as most writ­ers are wont to be, and hav­ing known Mr Fras­er for much of my jour­nal­is­tic life, he has put for­ward some un­palat­able facts right from the word go in his very an­a­lyt­i­cal col­umn which ap­peared three Wednes­days ago, some of which I am sure must have raised the ire of politi­cians, es­pe­cial­ly women and par­ty fa­nat­ics.

One of the more se­ri­ous ob­ser­va­tions thrown out and at which I ex­pect women to take um­brage, even though it is the gospel truth, was: "It is a time when women are ex­ploit­ed in many ways, male can­di­dates get pref­er­ence over them in 'safe' and 'un­safe' seats; a time when women are in­tim­i­dat­ed by males and when the dom­i­nant male po­lit­i­cal cul­ture rel­e­gates women to the mar­gins.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers