Dragon of murders

THE EDITOR: We have really lived to see a politician’s folly come to past. It all has to do with a dragon atop the Red House, a nacronomious chant by the present Prime Minister, and a handsome cheque of fifty thousand hard-earned taxpayers’ dollars handed over to a contractor in the dead of night. Yes, those were the ingredients concocted to slay a mystical Trinidadian dragon that has been happily dancing every day for the past few weeks on the glaring pages of one of our daily newspapers.

In 1991, the PNM’s campaign propaganda included a claim that Robinson had “put a dragon on the Red House” and the nation was suffering for his dragon-like behaviour. Thousands lapped up the mauvais lange. People voted the PNM in office for the toughest four years we have ever had (1991-1995). Oh, not forgetting, a crane was hired from a Port-of-Spain contractor and some vagrants reported seeing the harmless eighteenth-century sea-serpent being ripped off the Red House in the dead of night on December 17, 1991 — the day after Manning chanted his dragon mantra to a PNM take-over of Parliament.

To complete the midnight s?ance, a white dove — like the one used by funeral homes — was placed in the dragon’s nest with its beak pointing to Laventille, Arima, Maloney, and when the breeze is agitated — to Caroni, Chaguanas and Diego Martin. Sometimes, the vagrants say, it eyes the whole country changing into — not a dragon — but a corbeau. Today, fourteen years later, we don’t only have the corbeau-changing dove of greed, high prices and balisier-camouflaged corruption in the Red House but we also have a dancing dragon that pops up every day committing a murder, robbery, kidnapping or rape. Time for a new mantra — something like: Step aside PNM, Let truth and honesty solve de problem!

JEROME CHAI TAN
Lopinot