Sinking ship taking most of us with it

It came to mind, again, as I read the comments made by one of our representative at the recent Olympics in Rio, our pride and joy, Keshon Walcott, regarding the challenges the TT team members faced in their efforts to represent our country.

Walcott, like the rest of the team, having done us extremely proud, had the testicular fortitude to call it like he saw it. Many of us have known this for too long. Similar to the challenges faced by Team TT , the nation has been confronted with our own, also created by the “heads”.

While the captain transports passengers who are busy partying, noticing the ride is rough when they receive a sudden jolt, they are assured all is well. In their collective stupor they are advised that the jolt was merely a result of some turbulence, so they simply buckle in and return to “business as usual”.

Since the changing of the captaincy, this nation has been on a turbulent path, assured and pacified by a chorus with a refrain of “falling oil prices”.

With this chorus, the verses have included taxing everything under the sun, cutbacks in every sector, and most recently slamming the GATE shut on the few citizens who managed to make it past 50, in a society where the life expectancy has been significantly reduced as a result of another haunting melody: crime.

In all fairness to the present captain and crew, when Walcott spoke about OJTs being put in place to manage the affairs of the general public, with his focus being in sports, the OJT phenomenon has been present in our political system from the very inception. The late Patrick Manning, during his tenure at the helm, noted that the basic requirement for holding office was a “level head and common sense.” Apparently this basic requirement has been reduced. One cannot say what the basic requirements are today.

Seems like loyalty to the captain trumps all else. And I try to fathom an industry in the private sector which will intentionally place an OJT at the helm of its ship. The banking sector comes to mind.

The challenges we face on this tiny rock we so willingly call home are too numerous to mention. As a pseudo-professional, Jah knows I have tried to analyse them as they confront us on a daily basis.

Aside from our systematic, dysfunctional educational system, a major root is seen coming out of the politics of this land which dominates everything from killing mosquitoes to the purchase of a house, to sports.

The minute a politician or someone with political ambition gets involved in anything, that something becomes political. It is an understanding which evidently eludes the political parasites whose primary concerns have been about self-aggrandisement, historically; the last minster of sport being a prime example of such.

With politics dominating every sector, from agriculture, health, energy, tourism to education, national security/crime, transport et al, and with a bag of OJTs posing as politicians, having the final say in who does what, how, when and where, why then do we then act surprised of the final results? So this crew’s latest plan is to host another talk shop about crime, this time regional, at a cost of around $9 million.

This, we are being told, is its latest master plan to solving the murders in Enterprise, La Romaine and other “hot spots”. Meanwhile, the forensics department in St James is on auto pilot, with bodies piling up while families hold their heads and bawl.

The sinking ship goes to demonstrate, like the Titanic, that if those at the helm are clueless and consumed with power, as has been demonstrated time and again, it’s only a matter of time before the ship runs aground. A few will survive, undoubtedly, as they have life jackets spread across Europe and North America. As for the rest of us, “crapo smoke we pipe”.

Rudy Chato Paul, Sr D’Abadie