These are good and bad times

THE EDITOR: These are good and bad times for this great country of ours. A tiny dot at the edge of the mighty Atlantic, the world lit up with Keshorn Walcott’s gold and Jereem Richards’s silver at the World Athletics Championships while our mighty neighbour in the world of athletics, Jamaica, was nowhere to be seen.

And in equal measure TKR, in the lion’s den in Guyana, like Daniel in "the Great Book," would show them who is boss. Never mind they made the great Kieron Pollard cry – great men have been known to cry – but he showed his class and character by standing firm and performing for family and country.

And even as our WI team is elsewhere without the likes of Pollard, Nicholas Pooran and Sunil Narine, they will always be our heroes, even as the cricketing world laments the idea of the game without such stalwarts.

And Kamla Persad-Bissessar, no less, standing tall as our PM at the UN podium in New York, dispelling the myth of the Caribbean as a “zone of peace," pointing to the drugs and human trafficking that are overwhelming us as a region and emphasising the role of the US as counter and the need for our support, even as our neighbours with eyes wide shut bask in their “sovereignty” doing nothing.

It was a good two weeks for this little country of ours.

But we also have our problems. The bludgeoning to death of a 13-year-old innocent and the alleged connivance of higher-ups with the criminal world illustrate the dimension of our unabated criminality. And of course there is the money problem.

Money to run the country seems sorely lacking, so much so that the PM was obliged to accept the $94 million Chinese grant, full in the knowledge that such a move is likely part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative for Chinese world dominance, of which her current mentor the US is surely going to disapprove.

Where is the money going to come from? I don’t want to appear political but some recent revelations tell a horror story in this respect, one to the tune of two billion plus dollars from the public accounts yet unaccounted for, another in which millions have been allegedly appropriated by another political higher-up for self/family/friend aggrandisement, and yet another involving the tragic denial of workers while their bosses raked in millions from politically arranged contractual arrangements.

Exacerbating this is our downgrading to negative by an international financial body making borrowing difficult and the fact that revenue streams are few and far in between to add to our coffers so that bills can be paid and election promises kept.

I pity the Minister of Finance in terms of where he could begin to rectify this shortfall, but even as he would talk about measures for the long term, for the short term he could follow the precedent set in the US where higher-ups like James Comey, former FBI director, is being indicted, and do the same to those who are allegedly culpable recovering the billions stolen.

This could be great beginning for the many standing in line for relief.

DR ERROL N BENJAMIN

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