What about vendors, Mr Mayor?

THE EDITOR: Could I be allowed to comment briefly on four topical news items, the first two, local? Firstly the brave Mayor of Port-of-Spain, with Police backing, moves in and ejects vagrants from Tamarind Square. Whether at the request, or not, of the local Catholic Church this merely moves the problem elsewhere and abjectly fails to solve it which is apparently too difficult for generations of politicians. The point is, this is the same Mayor who, in March of last year, vowed to remove street vendors from downtown Port-of-Spain, particularly food vendors and specifically all vendors operating on Charlotte, George, Frederick and Prince Streets, declaring, boldly, “It is time to take our city back and clean up our streets.” Nothing personal, probably the PNM Central Government stepped in and told Mayor Brown this wouldn’t be good politics, but he should at least, in such a case, have the grace to resign. I mean, you stated your case, you said you’d do what you said and you didn’t. Well, leave office! Secondly I asked Conrad Aleong, through his secretary, many times to tell me why his cash-strapped airline did not cash in on the captive and lucrative Curacao route, (to where literally thousands of locals regularly travel to do business in the Free Zone there) and relieve passengers on this route from the non too tender mercies of the monopoly DCA “service”. But to absolutely no avail.

Aleong has now gone. Will someone be able to reply, after all new services to Suriname and Costa Rica (two famous high traffic routes, I do not think) were recently implemented? Thirdly the AIDS virus is now thought to have been initially contracted from Chimpanzees (over 99 percent genetically identical to humans). Yes, — through the violence and greed of African politics forcing combatants and fleeing civilians to kill these animals in their desperate need for food. The SARS virus is, likewise, now thought to have originated in forest animals used for food in the Far East. Local wild meat consumers had better take note. Despite our notorious local ostriches’ firm belief to the contrary, Murphy’s Law operates in TT too and we are not immune to what happens “away” as cocaine use, gun violence and AIDS itself should have taught us by now. Fourthly violence in the Middle East would soon be brought under control once the world’s news media slaps a unanimous and total ban on news reportage on the violence there. Bush cannot control Sharon due to fears for his domestic political power base erosion, Abu Mazen cannot reign in Hamas for similar, Palestinian political reasons. During the deafening and sobering silence of a worldwide news blackout the protagonists would be cowed to the negotiating table (where they might ultimately realise how very similar they were to each other) and forced to stay there until the unmitigated stupidness played out to the worldwide gallery, stops, and both common sense and decency prevail. Who knows? The world’s news media might even been awarded a collective Nobel Peace Prize!

GEOFF HUDSON
Port-of-Spain