Every year Car­ni­val comes around, I see gov­ern­ments spend­ing mil­lions on it and I get an­noyed. As a so­cial ad­vo­cate fight­ing for equal ac­cess to sup­port for autis­tic peo­ple in T&T, I know the long-last­ing im­pact that even one per cent of that mon­ey could have if it were di­rect­ed to­ward ed­u­ca­tion ser­vices and ther­a­py. But then, I am al­so a his­to­ri­an who teach­es the his­to­ry and cul­ture of T&T, so I ful­ly un­der­stand the cru­cial role of cul­ture in shap­ing our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty. I al­so un­der­stand that we need to in­vest in our cul­tur­al her­itage, mar­ket it prop­er­ly and al­low it a chance to de­vel­op. My ques­tion then, is how do we do this with­out the state fi­nan­cial­ly prop­ping up Car­ni­val every year?

For most peo­ple, a birth­day is cake, can­dles and mes­sages that ar­rive in cheer­ful bursts. For doc­tors, es­pe­cial­ly those who have spent years watch­ing bod­ies fail and time run out, a birth­day is al­so a reck­on­ing. Not dra­mat­ic. Not mor­bid. Just qui­et­ly un­avoid­able.

There is some­thing deeply dis­turb­ing about what we are see­ing on our na­tion’s roads. Cars flip­ping on high­ways. Man­gled met­al scat­tered like de­bris from a storm. Blue lights flash­ing while fam­i­lies stand frozen, wait­ing for news that will change their lives for­ev­er. This is not “nor­mal dri­ving.” This is not bad luck. This is speed, reck­less­ness, fa­tigue, al­co­hol, and poor judge­ment con­verg­ing in­to tragedy.

I be­lieve that be­yond cre­at­ing and cu­rat­ing the state of play in a busi­ness, lead­ers are re­spon­si­ble for ex­e­cut­ing an­oth­er com­pelling man­date. They must un­lock per­son­hood in in­di­vid­u­als. Guid­ing some­one to­ward per­son­hood is one of the most no­ble and sat­is­fy­ing acts a leader can ac­com­plish. Have you no­ticed how many in­di­vid­u­als re­main locked with­in them­selves? Have you no­ticed, as well, how many of these same in­di­vid­u­als flour­ish when the right leader ar­rives and pro­vides the psy­cho­log­i­cal and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pe­tus that awak­ens dor­mant po­ten­tial?

When peo­ple think about the health risks of al­co­hol, liv­er dis­ease and ad­dic­tion of­ten come to mind. Far few­er are aware that al­co­hol is a proven cause of can­cer. De­spite strong sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence, pub­lic aware­ness of this link re­mains sur­pris­ing­ly low, and al­co­hol con­tin­ues to be wide­ly per­ceived as a rel­a­tive­ly harm­less part of every­day life.

Al­low me to start by ask­ing the ques­tion us­ing the word “we” for the ab­solute fact that there are over ten unions un­der an um­brel­la body of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) and we are all some­what silent. The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) is wrestling with the deaf­en­ing si­lence, but we have cho­sen to speak, in­de­pen­dent­ly and open­ly, as sup­port­ed by our mem­ber­ship and ex­ec­u­tive. Labour can­not af­ford si­lence while job loss spreads and fam­i­lies feel the shock in their cup­boards, their com­mu­ni­ties, and even­tu­al­ly our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Grow­ing up in re­li­gious school en­vi­ron­ments and a suf­fi­cient­ly re­li­gious home and com­mu­ni­ty, I was ex­posed to the fa­mil­iar prin­ci­ple of “Do un­to oth­ers as (I) would have them do un­to (me).” I learned, too, that even non-re­li­gious peo­ple or those who do not read or sub­scribe to the Bible find this an im­por­tant tenet.

Sev­er­al weeks ago, our Prime Min­is­ter spoke of an in­ten­tion to con­sid­er ban­ning so­cial me­dia for a par­tic­u­lar age group. I agreed with that sug­ges­tion. The dis­cus­sion on the use of so­cial me­dia, how­ev­er, took a dif­fer­ent turn dur­ing the course of last week.

All fu­ture Iran­ian regimes are at risk of col­lapse, not just be­cause of US sanc­tions and Pres­i­dent Trump’s pos­si­ble bomb­ing, but be­cause of failed agri­cul­tur­al and wa­ter man­age­ment poli­cies. This col­umn will ex­tract lessons from Iran to ap­ply to T&T, which has al­so failed to use its oil rev­enue to be­come self-suf­fi­cient in food pro­duc­tion.

A cou­ple of weeks ago, the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that Her Ex­cel­len­cy Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo had been “a low-lev­el PNM func­tionary” and that the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors ap­point­ed by her were “bootlick­ers and brown-nosers.” These crit­i­cisms were lev­elled at them ahead of the Sen­ate de­bate on the ZOSO bill. When eight of them vot­ed against it, with on­ly Sen­a­tor Mc­Nish ab­stain­ing, the Gov­ern­ment’s bill was de­feat­ed.

Let me freely ad­mit: Amer­i­ca fright­ens me. These days. Not on­ly in my ca­pac­i­ty as a cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go, but al­so as a cit­i­zen of the world. That coun­try has made me afraid to vis­it there be­cause of the dis­tinct fear that has built up in me that I could be set up­on by mem­bers of its po­lice and mil­i­tary forces as a re­sult of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty or mis­char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of my sta­tus as a vis­i­tor on its vi­o­lent streets.

All eco­nom­ic de­ci­sions ul­ti­mate­ly have po­lit­i­cal con­se­quences, es­pe­cial­ly when they af­fect dai­ly life. James Carville, Bill Clin­ton’s 1992 cam­paign man­ag­er, em­pha­sised the key les­son: eco­nom­ic is­sues dri­ve vot­er be­hav­iour. His fa­mous phrase, “It’s the econ­o­my, stu­pid,” un­der­scores that the econ­o­my is of­ten the de­ci­sive fac­tor in elec­tions. Some­times this les­son is lost when in­cum­bents as­sume of­fice.