Marlene McDonald and failing State

From my point of view, the reported allegations and statements are symptoms of a failing, if not failed, State.

Our institutions are collapsing. But I am hoping we can prop them up.

There was the failure of protocol by several people as well as the breach of security at President’s House. And there was the arrogance and lack of civility which have become endemic among quite a few politicians.

The concern about failing or failed State has come up a few times because many citizens are worried about where the country is heading.

On August 14, 2005, Lennox Grant wrote an article headed “Tabloid realities of a failing State.” In it he quoted Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie, then principal at UWI, St Augustine.

Tewarie had said, “Between our security lapses and our record on poverty, we are a failing State, indeed, one vulnerable in the extreme and on the verge of failure.” At the time Tewarie was lamenting what had happened when Yvonne McIvor lost a part of her leg when a bomb exploded in a garbage bin in Port of Spain.

When former president George Maxwell Richards spoke at his inauguration on March 17, 2008, he said, “States are regarded as successful on the basis of economics but that is not enough. The world calls a failed State one in which there is war, where there is famine and where there is social disaster. We do not fit that profile.

However, there is evidence, when we consider crime, education, youth alienation, inter alia, to lead us to recognise that the underpinnings of strong statehood are not as sound as they should be …” Not too long ago, Rodney Charles, the MP for Naparima described TT as a failed State. I don’t think he was speaking lightly.

During Carnival this year, Winston “Gypsy” Peters sang a calypso called Angry Man. One verse stated: “If the reversal of hate is not on show; then we are in much bigger problems that we know; Our leaders must start leading the way; not just by what they do, but surely what they say;Our existence can’t be defined, by boundaries and borderlines that could never be.

Oh it can’t be them and we, that is a recipe for a failed country.” Now here we are in the midst of an unprecedented crime wave during which the detection rates are abysmally low and a man enters President’s House as a guest for the swearing in of a government minister.

The Special Branch officers who are tasked to guard the President are worried. But they do not query the bona fides of the guest, rather they “whisper” among themselves. Incredible.

No action was taken.

It is not that the man is a convict or any such thing, but Special Branch officers had certain suspicions.

On the other hand, the former minister breached the protocol for invitees to President’s House. The reports are that she ushered in the man who was not listed as a guest, proceeded to introduce him to the President, allowed him to mingle and take photographs.

The protocol officer is not without fault.

Clearly he had no clue about what really happened, far more how to deal with the situation.

I doubt whether these actions would have passed easily in other countries. I am sure that no one could have been allowed into the White House in the US so easily and those responsible would not have faced severe sanctions.

Well, so far, the minister has lost her job.

What happens further remains to be seen in this failing (or already failed) State. Let us hope for the best.

AIYEGORO OME Mt Lambert