Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

Don't vote. Why you must waste your time when you could stay cock-up right there where you is now, with your foot on the pouf and your bot­tom in the chair, watch­ing the same bad TV you watch most of your life, lis­ten­ing to the for­eign rub­bish on the ra­dio? Stay right there, nah. Don't vote. That ink hard to wash off any­way. Who need to stain up their fin­ger?

What dif­fer­ence it make if one of we vote or ent vote? As a man tell me the oth­er night, Kam­la is snake, Man­ning is snake; if both of them is snake why he must put he hand in a bar­rel to pick one? He go get bite ei­ther way.

So he not go­ing to vote. He fig­ure by not vot­ing, Man­ning go win. PNM un­der Man­ning cor­rupt, he say, but is a dev­il he know. He not pre­pared to vote in no new dev­il. He go stick with the PNM, not be­cause he have faith in them, but be­cause he don't have no faith in no­body. So he not vot­ing. He good for he­s­elf, yes. He must be fig­ure the coun­try does run it­self. He don't see no con­nec­tion be­tween the sys­tems he cussing now and the peo­ple who in pow­er. When dry sea­son like this one come and it ent have no wa­ter, is not a gov­ern­ment is­sue. When the rainy sea­son come and it have flood, is not a gov­ern­ment is­sue nei­ther. The bad roads, bad schools, crap­py air­port, the pass­port you have to bribe some­body to get for you... all that is not gov­ern­ment, ent?

It had years I didn't vote. It had years I spoil my vote for spite, too, rather than pick one or the oth­er in what I call not democ­ra­cy but dev­il-and-the-deep-blue­cy. If you say I have to choose be­tween two pothounds, you in­sult­ing my in­tel­li­gence and the sys­tem of democ­ra­cy. Par­ties have a right to put up good can­di­dates, not pay de­posit for some cra­paud and ex­pect we to vote for them. If the can­di­date you putting up have no track record, look­ing like a ban­dit, nev­er come round my house self to say he or she ask­ing me what is my is­sues, then you win­ing in my face when you put them up. Is like I bound to vote for who­ev­er you send, not so? Peo­ple like my friend who say he not vot­ing not just mad and have no sense of civic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Is be­cause they nev­er see no re­la­tion­ship be­tween elec­tions and gov­er­nance. Who­ev­er you put, they go run things the way they want to, any­way. It doesn't have noth­ing to do with you.

For you to make any dif­fer­ence you have to have a par­ty card, and be will­ing to use your in­flu­ence in the par­ty to get what you want. I don't think that is how par­tic­i­pa­tive democ­ra­cy sup­pose to work. It sup­pose to be that every cit­i­zen should have a right to say what it is they want, and get a fair hear­ing, ir­re­gard­less of if they in the par­ty. But the last time I was in a MP of­fice, it had a man with a video cam­era and peo­ple was brakesing from show­ing their face on cam­era be­cause them was UNC and wasn't sup­pose to be in a PNM MP of­fice.

So, since he ent go­ing and join no par­ty, and me nei­ther, what we vot­ing for?

Ten good rea­son not to vote:

�2 You have to reg­is­ter to vote. If you reg­is­ter they go know where to find you af­ter.

�2 You could spend the two hours you legal­ly en­ti­tled to on elec­tion day sleep­ing late in­stead of vot­ing.

�2 The polling sta­tion in a bad area. (Even if is right op­po­site your house.)

�2 You could be al­ler­gic to the polling ink. Or it might stain your shirt when you ac­ci­den­tal­ly rub your hand on your clothes.

�2 If you vote you might get emo­tion­al­ly in­vest­ed in the gov­er­nance of the coun­try, and when things start go­ing wrong you will feel too bad. Bet­ter to just stay out of it al­to­geth­er.

�2 None of your friends does vote so you rather blend in with the crowd.

�2 All of your friends does vote and you don't want to blend in with the crowd.

�2 Whether you vote or not it still not go­ing to make a dif­fer­ence. Your road still not get­ting pave and you still not go­ing to get run­ning wa­ter.

�2 You don't like rum or roti and you doesn't wear jer­sies.

�2 You don't care what hap­pen in T&T, and couldn't care less who run the coun­try.

To find out if you reg­is­tered to vote, go to: ebctt.com/reg­is­tra­tion.php