How to face 2023

PAOLO KERNAHAN

THE YEAR 2022 is fast fading in the rearview mirror. For many of us it can't disappear fast enough.

We poked our heads out from prolonged sequestration of the pandemic only to be confronted with the wreckage of our lives and a world changed, yet unchanged. In many ways, we immediately reverted to stone tools and the stone-age thinking that keeps us chained to failure and hopelessness.

For all the misinformation and manipulation of statistics shovelled by the Minister of Finance, our economic fortunes remain unchanged – there is no hope on the horizon for the green shoots of economic recovery to show themselves.

What we have instead are piecemeal and altogether questionable measures that hang like disparate threads in the air. Not one is connected to the other to form the fabric of thoughtful economic strategy. A loan here, feigned balancing of the budget there – it's all just bull.

This economic paralysis has contributed in no small measure to the upsurge in violent crime. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone as this government appears to have all the collective intellect of a lower primate at the Emperor Valley Zoo staring at the ground interminably, mystified by its own feet.

The semi-retired PM, ensconced in an alternate reality, asks the population to have faith and pray – but faith in what? Crime is worse than it's ever been. Prime Minister Rowley seems not to appreciate that his refusal to replace the Minister of National Security (which, admittedly, will produce no measurable result) is a resounding endorsement of Fitzgerald Hinds's glaring failure. The PM has always had a weakness for applying political decisions to managerial problems.

Emboldened by this, Hinds has embraced his inaction and incompetence with renewed vigour. He blames the population for not supporting him the way a losing football captain might blame fans for not cheering the side.

It's entirely reasonable to expect more of the same incapability and abdication of responsibility in 2023. So, how do ordinary citizens move forward amid an undertow of backwardness?

We will have to make even greater adjustments to our lifestyles to keep ourselves and our families safe. It hardly seems fair because we've already made so many contortions to account for the increasing rapacity of the bandits.

Civilian prey items have little choice but to further limit the number of places they go to on a daily. As it is, many of us have long since curtailed our nocturnal perambulations.

In the old days I used to go running (well walking/gasp-jogging) around the Queen's Park Savannah at 7 pm. All it took was for a friend of mine's to have a massive gun stuck in his face near the zoo and that was the end of that nightly exercise routine. It's safer to run in place at home.

As Carnival approaches, carnival jumbies need to carefully weigh the risk of having their vehicle stolen (or worse) against the potential reward of wining on a strange bumper in a fete. If you pay close attention to what's been happening on the ground you'll be forced to accept that the threat of robbery with violence is far worse than anything you've braved in years past.

The business community can also actively help citizens reduce their risk of exposure to predation. By improving online shopping platforms and establishing delivery services, fewer customers will need to emerge from cover for in-person visits. I'd happily pay a modest delivery fee every time to avoid the horror of finding an oil stain where my car was parked.

It's also past time that citizens find their voice and wake the slumbering government – if we do not, more of us will die. This isn't provocative hyperbole. This country needs to find the din of repudiation that reached ear-splitting levels during the People's Partnership's term in office.

The same voice of protest the nation was able to sustain like Pavarotti for a full five years is now conspicuously silent. Remember, silence is tacit approval of the way things are. If you fear political victimisation for raising your voice there is an outcome far worse; murderous bandits can silence you forever.

Some of what's said here will feel like ceding more ground to criminals, but that battle is already lost. 2023 can open a new front if more of us are prepared to show the Government that we aren't as comfortable as they are with watching the country slide into the abyss.