Governance at its worst

REX CHOOKOLINGO

WITH THE memory of the 2023 mud-splashed J'Ouvert participants receding like a quirky dream, the figurative equivalent of mud – TT politics – is continuing full steam ahead. Although we are not even at the midpoint of the current five-year electoral term, the two major parties are mudslinging with no holds barred; name-calling, innuendoes, demagoguing and obscene postulations are driving the media into a feeding frenzy.

While there's nothing fundamentally amiss with disagreements concerning how the people's business is conducted, the animosity between politicians is decidedly uncivil, raw, offensive, raucous and unbecoming of the highest officials in the land.

While electioneering once began a year before election day, it now continues non-stop, beginning even before the ink is dry at the swearing-in ceremonies, and continues unabated year after year, with the losers complaining about everything and anything – typical sour grapes – and the winners partying as if there was no tomorrow, with big money flowing, multi-million-dollar contracts, office buildings rented for millions more than if they were built from scratch, luxury vehicles, new homes, new millionaire-dollar briefs for cohorts.

Indeed, the lawyers always win; even when they lose, they still get paid. The system is rigged in their favour. No surprise there, since lawyers write the laws and include significant salary increases for all politicians, but extraordinarily little, if any, for those who struggle to make ends meet as inflation makes the four per cent offered to state employees a farce.

Meanwhile, on the ground, nothing changes for ordinary folks who look on and shake their heads in utter disbelief and wonderment. Moreover, many have given up on politics and opted to stop voting altogether. That is the level of disillusionment in our politicians and politics in general.

As we approach our 61st year of independence, the current government, like others before it, cannot deal with the intractable issues that keep us mired in crime, injustice and the erosion of the middle class. Can our water woes, dilapidated roads, corruption and justice system ever be fixed? Indeed, they can, and quickly too, despite the abject failure of all previous administrations to get it done over the last 60 years.

We cannot continue to look at neighbouring nations that are worse off than us and claim superiority. However, instead of pointing to Haiti and Venezuela, both failed states, we should look to other small nations like Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark, the three most stable governments in the world, as what is achievable. They boast either direct democracy, where the people make their own decisions, or representative democracy, such as ours.

The future is not as bleak as the opposition and other aspiring parties paint it. But we need a party representing the masses to keep the remaining wealth we still possess out of the reach of those who care nothing for TT as they continue to plunder the treasury and leave us bankrupt, figuratively and morally.

The right party will not be one of the millionaires and millionaire wannabees, not one of lawyers and doctors, but one of the disenfranchised. Let us not be ruled by the pigs (George Orwell's Animal Farm) who bridled against the system, but who, once they win the reins of power, become as corrupt as those they replaced.

Every problem that has been our lot for generations is easily fixed, not in years, but in months. Crime reduction, excellent roads, water for all, food security, availability of foreign exchange and natural justice are all achievable in months if the people are allowed to make their own decisions instead of letting the rich make operational, strategic and tactical ones that further enrich them and give lip service to fixing the real issues that bedevil the entire nation.

To make this happen, we must have a firm conviction in our ability to take the reins of power away from the oligarchs and send them packing. If we do not kick out the PNM and the UNC at the next general election, we could quickly become the next failed state. But the electors will only have themselves to blame as their lack of doing what's right will eventually bury us all.