Fools and our money are soon parted

Now you don’t have to be a student of ancient history to know that since Moses was a little boy both pot and kettle sported black bottoms. So it was quite understandable that whenever they “quarrelled” pot would call kettle black and vice versa. What’s ironic is that, apparently, neither pot nor kettle seemed able to see its own bottom.

You might well ask: “But where the hell is this leading to?” Actually, that aspect of “history” never ceases to repeat itself in our parliament as one side seeks to score cheap political points at the expense of the other. But what else is new? It’s no wonder that more often than not you’re likely to hear the “man-in-the-street” express his frustration by suggesting that our parliamentarians have been drawing our money “under false pretenses,” as they continue their “kicksin in and out of parliament.” Quite recently, in one of the more sober and saner parliamentary contributions by someone who was not simply singing for his supper and dancing to his leader’s fuzzy tune, a member of parliament cautioned, in effect, that “the greater the much-heralded anticipated boom, the greater the potential for a disastrous bust,” with the attendant confusion, chaos and anarchy likely to follow. Now, it’s not a question of “raining on anyone’s parade” or “putting goat mouth” on anybody. If truth be told, I believe that we’ve travelled that road before. But memories are short and political judgement even shorter.

You’d imagine that “a word to the wise” would not only have been sufficient but would have been gratefully received. No such luck. As I’ve said before, the name of the game is “pot calling kettle black.” So the fact that the member was a senior minister in the NAR government which had inherited a very difficult economic “bust period in the wake of a frittered boom” was used as an excuse to ascribe to the administration that he was associated with the sole responsibility for the July 1990 attempted coup. Now, I don’t want to get sidetracked by this, but I can’t help noticing how opposing sides are pointing fingers at each other for supposed roles in aiding and abetting what I have hitherto referred to as the possible “criminalisation of our politics or the politicisation of criminality.” Politicians accuse each other of “having sown the wind” by their unsavoury and dubious association with unsavoury so-called “community leaders.” Actually, organised crime may not be unrelated to the sowing of dragons’ teeth for political advantage. A lot of self-serving nonsense has been written about the July 1990 attempted coup and some have even “romanticised” it.  I’m afraid that, apart from the bits and pieces from here, there and everywhere, for one reason or another, the entire story may never be known. I’m not too concerned about that.

I, however, wish — if I may — to take one’s mind back to the general political climate of confusion, near-chaos and potential anarchy that existed in the pre-1990 scenario. The trade unions were mobilising their memberships for “hunger marches” and a major confrontation or, you might say, “a mother of all battles,” was presumably on the cards. Part of the strategy was a nationwide strike which would bring the government and possibly the economy to their knees, if not lower. I might mention here that in those days and circumstances, it was fashionable to talk about “taking the politics into the streets, deligitimising the government and just pushing the government aside,” by “people’s power.” As a matter of fact, some governments in Europe were simply made to feel the brunt of “people’s power” on the streets. But, as they say, “circumstances alter cases.” During that same period, in a panel discussion about the economic quandary that the country had found itself, President of the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Joe Pires, reiterated a statement made by Prime Minister ANR Robinson. According to Mr Robinson, if the government had not approached the IMF for funding, then it would have had to reduce its expenses by 40-50 percent. How ironic? In opposition Robinson baited PM Chambers and ridiculed him for the IMF option. One is sometimes tempted to wonder whether those who are prone to the mouthing of fatuous rhetoric ever stop to consider that sooner or later one has to come to terms with political and economic realities. One can’t just wish them away or even “intellectualise them out of existence.”

According to two reports laid in parliament by Economics professor Karl Levit and UWI economist professor Compton Bourne, there was the claim that there were “serious statistical irregularities” in the IMF’s analysis of the state of the local economy which may have contributed to the international credit problem of Trinidad and Tobago. A former IMF economist held out the straw that TT could claim compensation for the damage caused by wrong IMF figures. It was pointed out that there was no precedent for that. A more pragmatic Pires drew a bleak picture of the country’s economic predicament. He observed that in spite of the “halcyon days” when we were better off than most developing countries, “We now owe people, nobody will lend us any money and we have utilised everything that was saved from those days.” Can’t say that we weren’t warned then that, “a fool and his money are soon parted.” It’s of course when we seek to cry over spilt milk and what might have been, in the doubly sad realisation that, once again, “Some idiots and our money (nay, patrimony) are soon parted.”