Last Sunday I wrote about the revelations of our morality and behaviour—about grown men raping their little children, and how we chose to do nothing about it—just don’t stop the Mas’! Our “distraction” from those sordid revelations—let us push them aside quick quick—has been an outpouring of blame and revelations about political spite and ongoing incompetence in everything we do in the name of the State, our country, our culture, our education, our health care and our collapsing infrastructure.
Look, I still love this place! I do not write like this to complain, or just because I have 800 words to deliver each Sunday. Indeed, I can write about places here which most of you do not know, which are beautiful beyond dreams, and people who are beautiful and happy and can share an understanding of this land, our fantastic, unfulfilled capabilities, and the true joys of people, who without sinister and spiteful leaders, could show the world how different peoples of different religions can live together, blend together and become the Human Race.
But how can I write about all of that when all of that is surrounded by fires of greed and corruption, and willful incompetence and hatred?
What is it that we so hate about our country and ourselves? We respect no one and nothing. From the highest achievements we attain, which we fete in drunken orgy before turning scathingly upon the achievers, down to the very land upon which we live.
We are led in hatred and spite by our legislators, whose standards of behaviour have become so shamefully disgusting that we are no longer surprised at anything. Successive governments have continuously sabotaged our wellbeing and our economy by cancelling the projects of their predecessors. This has been going on since the NAR victory of 1986. NAR abandoned a water mains replacement, which the IADB was going to fund, because it inherited the project from the PNM. By the time NAR realized the need for the project, they were being displaced by the PNM. The PNM shelved the project—“their” project incidentally!—because it was now an “NAR project”! When the PNM abdicated government to the UNC in 1995, the project was on the front burner again, but removed by the UNC. Guess why?
Instead of replacing the leaking water mains UNC came up with Desalination Plant, to pump more water into the ruptured mains. We the citizens were conned into accepting this waste because it was “We turn now” for a political party to earn their graft. A case is pending out there somewhere if it has not died of stagnation. And this is why the people of South and Central have no water today, as the desalination plant has failed again! It is political spitefulness which only hurts the citizens, not the politicians.
And this trend runs through the Biche High School, the Tarouba Stadium, the Downtown Campus, and of course the building which the “Shadow Minister of Integrity”, Senator Faris al-Rawi seems to have some family interest, but which everyone is afraid to talk about—One Alexandria Place. The building, apparently suddenly leased from relatives of the Senator by the lame-duck PNM administration as they were demitting office, has been left empty by the UNC even as they pay rent and “security” for over four years now.
Political insecurity and the need to maintain monuments of previous governments and watch them fall apart, just so they can say “look what you left us” is costing the country millions. The current government cannot continue this lease in this way, unless they believe that enhancing the Senator’s family bank account is worth the “value” of continuing to accuse the PNM of “sweetheart” rental deals.
And this level of deliberate incompetence and insulting behaviour oozes down from parliament and contaminates everything we try to do. “Deliberate incompetence” is the practice of keeping everything in disorder in order to facilitate bribery at every level of state activity. And this is why we cannot even make laws any more. For decades none of the laws we make can stand up in courts. Section 34 was a good example of deliberate incompetence at work. The Dangerous Dogs Bill that we cannot write after more than fifteen years of not really trying is another.
Anand Ramlogan’s insult in parliament of a person who is a private concerned citizen is just another example of how our leaders insult us and degrade themselves. So it was no surprise when Senator Ramlogan compounded his insult while seeking to pat himself on the back for it. And he pretends he does not understand his own behaviour!
It is time that we either begin to manage our country and our affairs, or publicly acknowledge that we cannot!
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