At­til­lah Sp­inger

You may not be

A movie star

You may not dri­ve

A big fast car

But I love you in every way

I love you in every way

I don't know why

Oh why

-Bonafide Love,

Bu­ju Ban­ton and Wayne Won­der

I want to move a vote of no con­fi­dence in the lack of op­ti­mism that hangs over this coun­try. The lack of self-con­fi­dence that makes us vote against some­body just to get rid of them. And then two years lat­er, act sur­prised that the plan to get rid of one with­out be­ing ful­ly aware of what the oth­er had to of­fer has back­fired.

The way the Op­po­si­tion sanc­ti­fies it­self like they don't have 50 years worth of no-con­fi­dence in their back pock­ets. Like they don't recog­nise their own sins in this new dis­pen­sa­tion. The peo­ple need to move a vote of con­fi­dence in them­selves. The peo­ple need to re­alise that if they don't get in­formed and or­gan­ised then noth­ing will ever hap­pen and we will con­tin­ue this for­ev­er dance of non-con­fi­dence in lead­ers.

The peo­ple have to find the con­fi­dence to lead them­selves, since those who have been ap­point­ed to do so, don't seem to be­lieve they have the pow­er to make a dif­fer­ence to any­body's life, ex­cept their friends who want kick­backs for fund­ing their vic­to­ries. I want to move a vote of con­fi­dence in the cit­i­zens who al­ready re­alise this. For the cit­i­zens who are do­ing what is nec­es­sary to keep their com­mu­ni­ties go­ing. To keep their chil­dren safe and mo­ti­vat­ed. To keep them­selves op­ti­mistic that we have a fu­ture that will get brighter if we stay fo­cused on and ded­i­cat­ed to build­ing a na­tion, even if the lead­ers are dis­tract­ed by a lack of con­fi­dence in whether they will win the next elec­tion and there­fore lose the pow­er that they have.

The shame is too much to bear. I can't stand to watch the gross­ness of that par­lia­men­tary dis­play. It's a kind of ob­scen­i­ty that should have an X-rat­ing. X for the un­known dam­age that this will con­tin­ue to do to our na­tion. It's like those women who put their breasts through the pain and in­dig­ni­ty of wire bras for Car­ni­val. Are they more free? Are they more con­fi­dent? Or are they sim­ply dy­ing for at­ten­tion in a so­ci­ety that preach­es ap­pear­ance is the most im­por­tant thing you have to of­fer?

And like breasts in wire bras, the Par­lia­ment is a cage of our mak­ing and we watch our lead­ers squeal and squirm for our at­ten­tion and ado­ra­tion. We have to find con­fi­dence else­where, since our lead­ers suf­fer from an un­for­tu­nate com­bi­na­tion of lack of self-es­teem and ar­ro­gance. We have to move a vote of con­fi­dence in the cit­i­zens who keep this coun­try run­ning in spite of what hap­pens in Par­lia­ment.

I want to move a mo­tion of con­fi­dence in a la­dy from Moru­ga in whose yard I picked tamarind last Sun­day and held it in my skirt. And al­though she was in her Sun­day best just from church clothes she showed me the plants in her yard and helped me pick the fresh tamarind from the rot­ten ones. And I piled them in my skirt and set back down the Moru­ga Road, un­du­lat­ing and pock-marked, a piece of ug­li­ness to af­fect the ab­solute beau­ty of the place.

And I want to move a vote of con­fi­dence in Pam­beri on San Juan Old Road and Scherzan­do in Curepe where I went and saw young peo­ple en­gag­ing with spaces. Where there was beau­ti­ful art on the walls and the pos­i­tive air of peo­ple en­gaged in a life of cre­ativ­i­ty. And I want to move a vote of con­fi­dence in that bril­liant young woman who has set up Nais­sance Con­sul­tan­cy Ser­vices to ad­dress is­sues of be­hav­iour­al change us­ing cre­ative and in­dige­nous means.

I want to move a mo­tion of con­fi­dence in a woman called Kathryn whose good kar­ma is man­i­fest in her grand­daugh­ter Sloane's smile. And in a young woman called Liseli for shar­ing her love and light in pos­i­tive mes­sages on T-shirts. And in all my mu­si­cian friends who give beau­ty to the world. And I want to give a mo­tion of con­fi­dence to every sin­gle child that they will make bet­ter of the world that we have giv­en them. That some­one will love them enough that they will have to con­fi­dence to love oth­ers.

Con­fi­dence is a key word in the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion. That doesn't get said enough. No con­fi­dence is what we have that our coun­try is worth sav­ing. But there are so many peo­ple in T&T that we should have con­fi­dence in. That we should give our sup­port to. That we should find the time for. Be­cause they might not be loud and vis­i­ble. But they are do­ing far more for this coun­try than those who have the means to do bet­ter can man­age.

Maybe if we gave these peo­ple our vote of con­fi­dence we wouldn't have to con­tem­plate hav­ing no con­fi­dence in our lead­ers. Lead­ers need to learn to lead from be­hind. Cit­i­zens need to learn to chart their own path for the lead­ers to fol­low.