A country blessed, now cursed

THE EDITOR: Call me a pessimist and a cynic, but the fact is that Trinidad and Tobago may be beyond redemption now. This is unless some divine intervention thwarts the decadence seizing our communities and nation as a whole. But then you would also have to call me agnostic, because I don’t subscribe to the view that God is a Trinidadian.

So headed to Hades faster than the four horsemen, apathetic and uninspired, we are doomed as failures. Crime has become a hydra, dug into the trenches and waging war against the state and individual alike. Salvos take the form of kidnapping, drug running, gun smuggling and hired hits on prominent and not so prominent citizens. Where once there was safety, none can be assumed now. This inescapable reality for most means that living in fear becomes the only alternative to not living at all. Those who can, flee.

It is an indictment on a country blessed with natural riches, boasting super-projects as a symbol of its economic prowess, to have over twenty percent of its population living below the poverty line, or less than two US dollars per day. No amount of discipline can ease the pain of an empty stomach. Somehow, somewhere, priorities have been mixed-up. Multinational corporations come and go, debts forgiven, whilst our young men scamper to climb on garbage trucks headed for the dump.

Most disappointing is that our leaders and validating elites have left the nation wanting. Even if there are a few good apples left, there is no disguising the rotting tree. Institution after institution fails as the disease spreads, the nation succumbing to its own self-inflicted wounds. Wounds caused by intolerance, indiscipline and under production. Of attitudes that make us believe we can’t be better, we can’t do better, black people born to suffer. Though Eric Williams may have pulled us out of the ditch, how easily we have slipped back in. Yet, there is hope still. The ugly duckling did turn into a beautiful swan just as the caterpillar into a butterfly. Society must metamorphose. One of the seeds of transformation is Constitutional Reform, but it is not the only vehicle for change.

Our vision of 2020 must not only see material gains, but also the fulfilment of national objectives endorsed by one and all. This would lead to a greater cohesion between individuals and groups as we set about reconstructing Trinidad and Tobago. We should not strive to be a half-made society, but a first class, first world one. Are we ready to accept this challenge?

WAYNE JAGGERNAUTH
Loughborough University
Leicestershire UK