Yes, failure is an option - by Ken Ali

It is becoming increasingly difficult to fault the analysis of doomsayers that Trinidad and Tobago is racing toward failed nation status. Let’s cite a cross-section of news-making events of the past few days alone.

Steep food prices are now being matched by lightning shortages of certain items, most notably staples rice and flour, as if to belie the old people’s adage that "yuh cyar eat de money."

Through it all, parliamentarians are posturing ever more, and there is yet to be a meaningful proposal form the authorities to whip up food production.

With crippling international factors and crude indifference from the Trinidad and Tobago Government, the forecast for food supplies is gloomy. But, who is bothered?

Prime Minister Patrick Manning, who stage-managed Friday’s hi-jinks in Parliament, is seemingly more concerned by political one-upmanship, such as the move to take opposition parliamentarians to the government-dominated Privileges Committee.

It is the kind of self-centredness that had Manning delivering a spiel to the nation the other evening, simply to justify the purchase of his much-coveted costly executive jet.

In the meantime, Rome is burning. The dreadful cost of living is striving valiantly to become the nation’s prime villain, but crime is continuing to rule the roost.

Virtually every week there are new disclosures about multi-million-dollar government spending on crime fighting, but the report card is becoming increasingly horrendous.

The cold-blooded murder of Meela "Melanie" Sagram for daring to defend and protect her teenaged daughter has long paled from the headlines in a land in which, if you blink, you could miss gross and dastardly violent acts.

Like the one in which a man killed and then dumped his lover’s body. Or the shooting death of a young man in Santa Cruz. Or the police slaying of a Laventille man, curiously nicknamed Taliban. And that was just one day’s fare!

Tomorrow would toss up another parade of horrific crimes, and Security Minister Martin Joseph would respond with typical bleeding heart diatribe, with great sound and fury signifying nothing.

Murders and other major crimes – like a carjacking of a Fyzabad taxi man, allegedly by two young women – have long numbed and stolen the innocence from a nation rushing frenetically from bewilderment to gross disgust to grinding fear.

Lawlessness pervades the land. So, parents of students at Erin Road Presbyterian School, upset about the administration of the institution, chain the principal’s car to iron gates.

Indeed, our schools have become such a critical war zone that the media feed only off staggering events – like a wretched stabbing – all the while ignoring reports of frequent classroom scuffles, of drug running and of pornography gone so wild that – if we are to believe university expert Dr. Daphne Phillip – teachers are now passing material to students, via electronic devices.

There is seemingly no bright spark. Education is floundering. Health care has collapsed to the point where the minister, a freewheeling character named Jerry Narace, has to intervene to have burn victims flown for attention to Miami. You see, the highly industrialised TT still does not have a burns unit!

The social scientists measure a failed state by textbook yardsticks about the absence of economic benefits et al., and no one disputes that benchmark.

But another gauge must be the happiness index of a nation and how deeply the financial spoils seep to the underclass.

Yes, joblessness is at one of its lowest levels ever, thanks, in part to make-work schemes that distort the employment picture. But poverty remains rampant and in many communities. This social devil is coupled with hopelessness, lack of education and training, sex crimes, deviance and other forms of wretchedness that do not fit a society with one of the largest per capita budgets.

And there are no tangible and urgent measures to right this disturbing wrong.

The helplessness is not limited to the downtrodden. The mystery suicide of millionaire real estate agent, Sabrina Ramlogan-Rahamut, may have been linked to domestic issues. Or not.
There may also have been colluding factors associated with rampant national despondency.

In all of this, there is a graphic breakdown or growing irrelevance of key institutions.

Witness, for example, how Fr. Garfield Rochard, a vital figure in the Catholic faith, refused to offer refuge to Harold Joseph, a murder witness on the run. When Joseph was duly killed, Rochard, without a blink of his conscience, declined to proffer remorse – or last rites.

Maybe the society has slipped too far down for a vital intervention by important institutions. Or maybe these stakeholders are taking their cue from Prime Minister Patrick Manning, who, like a child with Christmas morning toys, is simply thrilled over the number of skyscrapers being built.

Or Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday, who has likened himself to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, with his senseless laptop computer "struggle."

Trinidad and Tobago sorely needs exemplary leaders, in addition to a sense of direction and common national purpose. Regrettably, they appear as scarce as flour and rice.

- Email Ken Ali at kenvick22@hotmail.com
Ken's column also appears on www.hotlikepepperradio.com