The leadership hoax

THE EDITOR: Followers we will always have with this eternal question to answer, “Where have all the leaders gone?”

Twenty-five years into the 21st century, 62 years after independence, 48 years as a republic, and almost 200 years after emancipation we are still looking for a messiah.

It appears that the TT society has concluded that Christopher Columbus did not discover this island and is undeserving the fame credited to his voyages. Action has been taken to tear down his statue and remove the three ships from the coat-of-arms.

If Columbus was the discoverer, we cannot change history. If he didn’t, our claims to land ownership are false if we did not make our purchases from the Indigenous peoples. Are there any genuine landowners?

We have squeezed our First Peoples disrespectfully into a corner as they plead for a 24-hour holiday. What do we want them to prove still?

Next in line are the modern-day leaders.

It was once thought that leaders were God-sent and later they emerged through necessity. Now elections and coups are other routes to the limelight before they show their true colours as they descend on the population like an avalanche.

Once entrenched, leaders surround themselves with people who are daft, follow blindly, rarely object, cannot think outside the box; in short, total yes-men.

It is obscene for followers to ask for succession planning as leaders hate to think of having an expiry date, and anyone who dares to challenge leadership will be sent to Siberia.

In TT many are given token ten-day roles in the leadership position to test their mettle, but none seem to live up to the hype. A conscious move for fear of being viewed “cokey-eyed” and eventually relegated to the back of the class or labelled a dissident.

Big, big men and women pay submissive frightful homage to their leaders and do not know if they can bark, howl or bray. A school inspector lecturing to primary schoolchildren is a fitting description of a cabinet meeting.

Most leaders hold on for life, not relinquishing the position as they find it difficult to come back down to earth. There is no shared experience with the followers as intra-communication is shady and revelations lack transparency, a deliberate attempt to keep followers in the dark.

So ministers of the round table have been numbed to giving critical analyses; mentally paralysed to creating initiatives and blind-folded when they have to walk the talk.

Other parliamentarians gathering moss but given little credit for performance from their constituencies are unable to give an evaluation of their work. Retention by the party is no indication of their success, but a dearth of new blood. The people they serve are now left in wonderland if they are stuck with servants inflicted with intellectual seizures.

Leaders go off on a tangent before they demit office. They kiss babies and hug citizens and have the grin of a tiger before a meal in the last days of their reign. They hurl abuses at the opposition and anyone voicing anti-government sentiments.

They swear that some organisations will not enjoy the benefits of leasing state assets. Leaders refer to some citizens as “idiots” when they vet foreign investments that want to enjoy the TT financial environment. The list of derogatory remarks is unending

Leadership could cause TT to lose ground when members of the ruling party are in a chokehold and pretend that this is the nature of democracy.

The opposition is labelled as always wrong and never receive a respectful hearing. Citizens not aligned to the ruling party remain Trini to the bone and just “nah leaving.”

There is no greater turn-off than leadership that is unapproachable and uses an iron fist to keep the herd together.

The world is in chaos because leadership prefers to follow its own agenda to the dismay, disgust and silent disappointment of the multitude. As the saying goes, “Pressure does buss pipe.”

LENNOX FRANCIS

via e-mail