In a state of collapse

And we are offered no sense of leadership to reverse these failings.

Certainly on no government front do we see any initiatives which might promise stability, far less confidence for the immediate or medium term future. And the same is obvious on all business fronts. Business seems to be as badly adrift as our government right now, and regrettably this sector seems to have adopted a stance that silence is more golden and beholden than expressing concerns and working towards solutions to our many failings. Indeed, much of our business sector is now more focused on acquiring foreign exchange to salt away overseas, than using their export earnings to fund raw material imports.

How many of us remember, several months ago, a senior member of our manufacturing community righteously demanding tranches of increasingly scarce foreign exchange to keep his manufacturing business going. When it was suggested that the business fund its raw material imports out of its finished goods export sales, the businessman was indignant.

Apparently his export sales income was his personal money, not to be put back into sustaining his business! When the price of oil is riding high and we have lots of money to waste everywhere, that attitude may not be critical. But now that we are earning so much less from petroleum—partly due to lower prices, but mostly due to our appalling mismanagement of the sector—we cannot afford to keep using limited petrodollars to fund private sector imports, which when processed locally and then exported sees that foreign exchange salted away in private accounts.

Now, I know that there are local companies who export finished goods, and use their exports to finance ongoing imports. And this is as it should be. But there are also those who claim, as the business under discussion here, that they have the right to hoard their foreign sales and demand that the Central Bank provide them with fresh tranches of our dwindling petroleum foreign exchange.

Our country desperately needs to control our outflow of foreign currency, which is siphoned out by imports, exports like the above, and the drug trade. But control is not on the agenda, mostly because both of our political parties are complicit with and beholden to the current selfish business ethics in our land.

The above demonstrates that white collar crime is so much of the norm in this land that we accept it as part of our lives. From the Clico debacle, through all the wastage on incomplete projects at Petrotrin, no one ever is brought before the courts for losses of hundreds of millions of dollars.

We do not even really discuss it.

Certainly not like how we discuss street crime, gang crime and the ever rising threat of radical Islam.

That threat, a major concern to other countries, is not recognised here for what it is. We see it, or pretend that we see it, as street gangs killing each other for drug and contracts turf. We know that from the time of the Muslimeen uprising and killings of 1990, both the PNM and the UNC when in government have supported and courted the radical Muslim sector, with contracts and protection from prosecution.

And this is still in effect, with the current government begging the various warring gangs to be nice while declaring dead people to be charged as terrorists.

Make no mistake about this: It is the ongoing State support and even funding of criminal gangs, including those which send jihadists to Syria for training and then return here to wreak havoc, which has created the current gangland situation. PNM, UNC , PNM, PP, PNM—all have courted and funded the gangs and the extremists.

And now there is no one left who can deal with the situation— killings, kidnappings and cocaine.

And while all the gangland wars rage outside of the securely gated communities, the government cannot function in any sphere of management of our country. The debacle of the ferries for Tobago, the ongoing collapse of our infrastructure, the rusting incomplete bridges and retaining walls on rural roads, the breakdown of discipline in our schools, far less in our communities, the ongoing inability to provide water to the population, all indicate that we are a failed society, a society in collapse.

What is keeping us from at least acknowledging this? We cannot continue to just hope and pray.

It is time acknowledge where we are, so t h a t we can start to rebuild a just a n d f a i r and effective society.