The republicanist charter

As the anaconda of traffic tightens its noose around us nationally, gradually, each suffering in her own jam, silently, so it is with the larger economy.

We have less and less money for investing in a proper, safe, affordable public transport system.

Less and less money for our health, hospital economy, as government revenues decline.

Less and less value for our public sector wages, economy, as Government tightens its, and our, belts.

Less and less employment for our youth, as our primary and secondary school systems fail to revolutionise.

Less and less safety in our communities, where litigiousness, lawlessness, drugs, banditry abound, in the absence of good juridical relief.

Less and less hope for our prison inmates and remand yard concentration camp.

And less and less buffer from our import economies, where foreign exchange volumes decline; and global war increases in currency over global trade.

We are marching busily into gridlock and insecurity. And we seem helpless to do anything about it.

There is no better place to start than with our Parliament.

It is easy to say we can govern ourselves, forget the Parliament and Government. But as long as our governments remain the main collector and spender of national income, they must be held to account, made to take action.

Unfortunately, our Parliaments have failed the grade on, first, accountability and, second, action. Our Parliaments have become a revolving door of amnesty. Government after government come into power, pardoning the crimes of former governments. We don’t have to give the proof of this. This is so. Patently so. Our Parliaments are only able to offer us less accountability, and we will see in our upcoming Budget, more austerity.

And our Parliaments have lost the capacity to act. They have become as much as sitting ducks as we waiting in traffic, turning up our windows, listening to soft music. Parliament is also in traffic gridlock.

It has lost its feet on the ground. It has become an abstraction, abstract issues.

While our people are sitting in gridlock, Parliament is playing to the soft music of cuchoor and comesse.

The people’s problems are relegated to the back pages, as inanity and diversion seize the main headlines.

Parliament must go.

Our constituencies, regional corporations, Parliament must be reconfigured into 33 to 40 municipalities on the ground. Where elected authority — good order, law, peace and prosperity — independent of partisan duress, is within reach.

The better to reform our judicial, security, prison, transport, food production, health, traffic and educational sectors. Parliament must not be let off the hook. It must go.

People must not fall into the trap of accepting powerlessness.

They must not fall into the trap of thinking that traffic, gridlock, deadlock is part of life, is inevitable. These problems can be solved.

We have to re-people our government. Bring government closer to us. Give ourselves the power to act. And account.

This is called Re-publicanism. Do have a happy Republic Day 2016.

Wayne Kublalsingh via email