An eye for an eye - the Peter O'Connor column

AN EYE FOR AN EYE …makes the whole world blind. 

These words of Mahatma Gandhi apply specifically and poignantly to our condition here in Trinidad and Tobago. Yes, I know that we do not go around and literally dig out each others’ eyes, but figuratively this is part of our culture. And politically it has become ingrained in our psyche, over fifty failed years of independence, and carved into our political parties’ mantras as “We turn now” and “Fix me first”.

As we watch in disappointment at the ongoing mismanagement of almost every facet of government, governance and the public services, we have to try to come to terms with the reason for our failed state. 

But to come to terms with that, we have first to admit that we are a failed state, a miserably inadequate society by almost every international gauge, and acknowledge that there is nothing on the horizon, or within any potential government that we can envisage, to improve our status.

I know that what I am writing is sacrilege, for this is the month we begin to “celebrate” that we have been politically independent for fifty years. And instead of being introspective and considering our state and trying to fix our country and our society, we goin’ and fete! And who the hell is Peter O’Connor to suggest otherwise?

A major cause of our management failing in so many areas is that we must, following every election with a change of government, flush out literally hundreds of boards of directors, senior managers, and general party lackeys, and replace them with “we own”. 

And we have far too many ineffective state companies and agencies anyway, most of which cost money and lose money and the public purse has to pay for these losses, and for the grand salaries, and executive cars and homes for the incompetents we place to satisfy our party financiers and supporters.

But while other governments do the same thing, although not nearly to the extent that we do here, we have an added, unwelcome and potentially dangerous condition in T&T. 

Because our two major parties draw their support from different ethnic groups, the election losers do not simply lose their jobs and their perks—as happens in Barbados, Jamaica, St. Kitts and most of the former British Caribbean. 

In T&T supposedly educated men, who happily socialize with others of different races, suddenly see their loss of politcally-appointed jobs as “Another black man bites the dust”, and “Ethnic cleansing at work”. They do this without shame and without understanding what this dreadful hyperbole sounds like to sane people.

But they send out the cry all the same, because this will be their justification to do the same thing when they return to power. You fired me and mine, I am going to dismiss you and yours. “We turn now” and “fix me first”! 

And this never-ending but tightening circle of hopelessness is sucking us down to our doom. But let the band play on, because we have to pause in our machinations to fete for independence, even though we have no idea what independence means.

“Independence” means the capability to collect garbage, maintain our roads, drains and other infrastructure, provide a reliable water supply, health services or security to our citizens. And we cannot do these things. We clearly have neither the will nor the competence—and this is not debatable—to do the basic things.

We simply cannot run major business enterprises like Petrotrin, Caribbean Airlines and UdecoTT if we have to change whole boards every time we have an election. And we all know this. But once it is “we turn now”, the political directorate, notwithstanding all the promises to run the country on merit, must-- and the operative word is “must”—appoint family, friends and financiers to take over from the previous family friends and financiers.

Would you operate a business like this? 

Well you are, as a taxpayer, this is what you are doing. As corporate citizens, banks and suppliers to government, this is what you are supporting: The wholesale dumping, by rotation, of any vestige of business talent in the management of the flagship enterprises of the state. 

And it is being done—with your support, remember—to satisfy the “eye for an eye” syndrome of making sure that we put all of “our” people in cushy positions for five years, so that they can finance our re-election campaigns.

I support the current government because it is the last hope we have. Does anyone among you think that the return of Reverend Juliana Pena will change anything but the faces we endure?

I call upon this government to start the next fifty years by publicly disavowing “we turn now” and carve their place in destiny by simply providing open equality and justice for all.