Politics, Religion, Sex & Drugs...

Oscar Wilde wrote “Everything is about sex. Except sex. Sex is about power.”

The Prime Minister, in response to a direct question on her government's position on the decriminalization of homosexuality in Trinidad & Tobago stated categorically that the environment for the conversation does not yet exist due to the position being taken by religious bodies on the issue, specifically the Catholic Church, which prompted a scathing response from the same Catholic Church denying that statement but which notably omitted to state, if she was wrong, then what exactly the church's position on the matter is.

Now before we tear in to the matter and have our say it is worthy to note that no other group in society risk prosecution over sexual expression like homosexuals do, despite this being an overtly sexual society described in some quarters as a hyper-sexualized environment. The issue is reduced to how they have sex, as if this is anyone else's business. From there the matter becomes cloudy with inflamed passions over what is right or wrong, moral or immoral or even what is detrimental to the society as a whole, and while I try my best to stay out of bedroom politics, this matter is actually worthy of a discussion if only to prove that we are mature enough to be seeing after our own affairs.

Questions need to be asked and chief among these should be, why should this matter? Without getting into the nitty gritty as to how sex is practiced on all sectors of society, do we really believe that how consenting adults interact sexually can have an impact on the development of society?

And what of the other sacred cows such as marriage and child rearing, do we really believe that the sanctity of heterosexual unions can somehow be undermined by the fact that homosexuals want to also commit to one person for the rest of their lives? Or that unclaimed orphans are much better off languishing in orphanages rather than be given the opportunity to grow in a home environment because we disagree on how those people express themselves sexually?

I for one have been trying to be very mature about this, and while still do not understand a lot of what makes a person homosexual, whether it is in fact nurture, nature or genetics at play, I find that the issue has become one of human rights, and for me to be the social activist I believe myself to be then I am going to have to have to at least weigh in on the human rights aspect of the matter.

The criminalization of homosexuality is wrong on multiples of levels and should be undone. Human beings should be free to express themselves sexually and we as a society need to grow up to that point.

Hoping not to inextricably link the two, I cannot avoid the comparison with this issue and the issues surrounding the decriminalization of marijuana for personal use. Again, this is not a matter 'dear to my heart' as it is another cause for which I am outside the affected group, but here again is another example of legislation failing to keep up with the times. It is a publicly known fact that many, many people smoke marijuana on all levels of society for different reasons. As recreation to get high (as compared to drinking to get drunk), for medicinal purposes (suppression of pain and other negatives associated with chronic disease) or for other reasons, and while we are legally allowed to drink ourselves into a stupor, the use of marijuana has been linked to the opening of the gates of hell and the unleashing of the demon hordes to destroy society.

Seriously?

If you have ever had to engage people who take their marijuana use seriously the first thing you would notice is the almost passionless lack of zeal. It has been scientifically noted that marijuana suppresses urge and perhaps may be a useful thing if harnessed and put to good in our penal institutions, but that is a topic for a whole other discussion. Noteworthy to the discussion, the ill effects of smoking are well known, yet more people die from the avoidable consequences of smoking cigarettes than any other cause and are allowed to do so legally. The facts outstrips the fiction now associated with the drug, and again this is something that requires national dialogue and perhaps a vote from which to make a decision.

Put the democracy to work and let the people decide. Call a referendum on the two issues, giving all sides three months to 'campaign' for their cause, phrasing the ultimate questions as simple yes or no:

Do you think homosexuality should be decriminalized yes or no?

Do you think marijuana for personal use should be decriminalized yes or no?

Guided by the results, laws should be either enacted or repealed to reflect the will of the people. That is the way mature societies should address polarizing issues and in the process create a space for the harmonious enjoyment and celebration of each other's differences in my humble opinion.

Reading Rowley Right...

Translated from Spanish to english, Las Alturas means 'The Heights,' and clearly there were some serious 'heights' (as the young people say) at play in this entire fiasco that is now crumbling down without ever having been used. Adding to the legacy of mistakes that included the purchase of a boat that never float, building homes that could never be used and that had to be torn down is going to be a damning indictment on anything the People's National Movement says from here, but of all the 'heights' that one has to deal with where this latest scandalous fiasco is concerned, I am surprised that so many people missed Dr. Rowley in his defense of his track record, stated that this was just the latest in a series of attacks, that Kamla Persad Bissessar was now 'Baby Uff' to former Prime Minister Patrick Manning's 'Pappa Uff.' What was his message here? Clearly a sotto voce 'play' comparing the two to the Duvalier clan of the Pappa Doc and Baby Doc regimes that were famous for the Tonton Macoute extermination of tens of thousands of Haitians, but forget his hatred for the current Prime Minister, isn't he now calling out his former leader who he just finished lionizing and deifying as the best Prime Minister we have ever had only last week? So which is it? Is Patrick Manning the corrupt thief, guilty of enabling with full knowledge the wholesale looting of the nation's treasury through bid rigging and corruption for six long years under Calder Hart? Or is he, as we were told, such a blessing that a nation is fortunate if it produces one such stalwart in its history, we having been blessed to have spawned a legend whose shoes he admitted he would never fill, so how does he now come to refer to the same man as a brutal dictator and a murderer?

Will the real Keith Rowley please stand up?

And what about his defense of his spin doctor in chief Faris al Rawi, whose stint on the Housing Development Board should be the foil from which we draw comparison for his eager ambition to high office? The same Rowley and al Rawi who insisted that the sins of Lifesport were the responsibility of the line Minister who 'ought' to have overseen the activities of his Ministry and any of its charges and agencies, yet fail to see the irony, the culpability of Faris in his failure of his fiduciary responsibility over the same Las Alturas heights? Shouldn't Keith Rowley be dismissing Faris as we speak so as to walk the talk he walks so heavily? Isn't Faris at the very least materially responsible for the failure and because of such, unfit for public office? Where are the mea culpas? The outpouring of connected responsibilities that the opposition uses to hang the government from?

Again, the almost karmic irony here is almost laugh out loud funny, because, had the PNM been in office right now, this same Las Alturas fiasco would have been enough to pull them down from office if the same standard that they want to hold out to others were applied.

Keith Rowley's immediate replacement at the Housing Ministry Emily Dick-Forde said in her brief statement on the issue that she inherited 'a mess' and was 'appalled at the backward approaches being employed at the Ministry,' again not the most noble or stellar of endorsements for the man who has his heart set on running an entire country.

The cold hard facts that seem to dog Keith Rowley no matter how hard he tries to outrun them through distraction, deflection and misdirection is the abysmal failure of his own track record in office. The fact that not one but two major multi-million dollar projects failed under the People's National Movement over geological issues, Las Alturas and Tarouba despite that administration being led by two supposedly qualified geologists, one of whom was no less a person than the then Prime Minister, the other the focus of this Commission of Enquiry, Keith Christopher Rowley, the man one assumed would be able to read and understand the implications of a geological report on the suitability of a site, who has held the most loftiest standards for others to uphold, seems to have once again catastrophically flubbed his lines.

Will the multiples of millions spent on Las Alturas, like the multiples of millions spent on the 'unfloatable' MV Sue and the unstable, unusable Brian Lara Cricket Academy at Tarouba be also written off as just others in the numerous already written off as the cost of a PNM government? From the Caroni Racing Complex that cost billions without even a foundation to show for it to the latest 'heights,' how much will be enough for the people languishing in squalor and poverty of the shrinking PNM die hard communities, feeding flour pap as milk to their babies, dodging bullets, living hand out to hand out, defending a party long on theft, mismanagement, mistakes and corruption, and woefully and abysmally short on any people centered, country focused policies? How much before they too say enough?

Keith Rowley, you said once that we as a nation should judge you on your track record. Which track record were you referring to?

Diplomacy, Controversy & Recognition...

Awards serve two purposes: they recognize the contributions of the awardee deemed worthy of public acclaim, and they use that recognition to broadcast to the widest audience those qualities that we think admirable and deserving of note so as to impact the society as a whole through emulation.

With that said, this column was almost entitled 'The Theatre of the Absurd.' It is no overstatement to say that this year's national awards ceremony has been dogged by needless controversy and mishandled to the extreme, creating fiascos where none needed to be. Putting aside the human resource responsibility of dismissing those responsible for the cluster faux pas, we need to take urgent and positive steps here to undo the damage to such an important national institution so as to prevent the awards themselves becoming tarnished and devalued.

The fact that no one received the Order of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago this time around seems only to underscore the point being discussed on all levels of our society that, all controversies aside, no one was more deserving of such recognition than Dana Seetahal. To hear her family speak, accolades and awards meant nothing to Dana unless it was something that she was actively striving for through dint of sheer effort and hard work, in which case one would be advised to get out of her way.

The real reality here is that granting her the Order of the Republic does nothing for Dana, in fact it takes more than it gives. She does not need it to complete her or her legacy as a legal and social champion or as a reliably strong voice and clear mind through cloudy times, if anything, as a recipient she now contributes to the value of the thing. Perhaps this is what those charged with the responsibility failed to understand, the organic, almost ephemeral nature of issues such as these. That judged solely on the pantheon of those who have received the award for contribution deserving of the highest of national recognition raises the value of the award itself or, conversely, handing it out too cheaply devalues and diminishes the contribution and even the reputations of those others who have gone before.

It is for this reason that I have said that neither Basdeo Panday or Patrick Manning deserve such a prestigious recognition for simply doing their job. Neither of them were so extraordinary a leader that we are bound to immortalize them, if anything both seemed to suffer from the same feet of clay that grounded them and robbed them both of their individual legacies. That is stuff for another discussion, what we need to do right now is find a way forward that restores the reverence and the lustre of the national awards and puts the wrong things done here right.

The public will not be satisfied with anything less than the Order of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago for their reluctant hero, and the government has the power to agree and acquiesce. The family and custodians of her memory have graciously agreed to accept the award at a future date, so why not use that opportunity to reflect on the life of Dana Seetahal to see if an error was in fact made, one that cannot be put right as a win for everyone?

It is regrettable that the process itself could have been so cheapened by this mishandling of what should have easily been a public relations coup for a government badly in need of a victory where public opinion is concerned, that they could hardly afford another misstep of any kind at this point is itself an understatement, especially one this avoidable. I have said before and am prompted by these events to say again that the Prime Minister seems to be almost a victim of her own advisors as some of these unforced errors seem almost designed to make the good lady look bad.

As no other leader in recent history has so mastered the art of accepting consequence in hindsight and then doing the right thing as this Prime Minister has, we can at least rest easy knowing that the solution, when found, can be said to be in good hands. That her leadership style has become one of sober thought and decisive leadership where and when required is without question, so if anyone can fix this with a decision shared with the public, she can.

In this case Madame Prime Minister, and with an abundance of respect I suggest that you play to your strengths and demonstrate that now trademark quality that promises to define your own legacy. I implore you to reach across the limitations of this mortal plane and bring Dana back to life. Engage this most devoted and giving daughter of the soil and bless us all by awarding her the highest accolade that we all can give, in tribute and recognition of a life so richly lived.

Independence 2014

Forged from the love of liberty is the opening line to this country's national anthem, and while we may cherish our liberty, it is as much an overstatement to say now as it was then that the independence we know today has been forged as in iron, melted to the quick to be reformed and repurposed. No, our nation was not forged but negotiated into being on the collapse of the Federation of Caribbean states that perhaps, if we had today, would have us soaring among the great nations, twenty five million souls strong, food and energy independent, able to punch way above our weight and class.

In the fires of hope and prayer we hope on and pray for the selfless guidance that would transform this nation into something more in keeping with what something this blessed should be fifty two years along on its journey

With boundless faith in our destiny speaks to a unified vision, something that we have glimpsed twice, maybe three times over the course of our history. The raising of the red, white and black in 1962, the surrender of the Jamaat al Muslimeen in 1990, and the qualification for the World Cup in Germany in 2006. Other unifying moments may have occurred but they slip my mind now, I name these three as contrast to the chaos of our normal, one nation divided under God.

Side by side we stand, islands of the blue Caribbean Sea is sung with such pride if for nothing then celebrate your geographical location, this our native land, for many of us, three and four generations in we are still reminded that we are not 'Trini' enough (whatever that means), we pledge our lives to thee.

Here every creed and race continues to fight for an equal space, with the dream of the proportional representation that might make that a reality if only politically now paused perpetually in the name of a second ballot run off that is supposed to give smaller groups a magical voice somehow, we lurch and lumber on.

Many things come to mind when celebrating independence, in our case all we have to give thanks for is that we get to make our own decisions, regardless of how reckless that process might sometime seem to be.

Fifty years on we are still no closer to racial harmony, still have no working model to really share the wealth of this nation among the creeds and races that we boastfully claim in our rainbow, and we still have not found the self awareness to understand that in a nation this wealthy, any ghetto, regardless of the make up of its inhabitants, is an indictment of failure against us all.

We are a nation of contrasts and contradictions that have struck up an uneasy peace lubricated by the petrochemical dollars that keep us all employed. Until we can develop an economy that can survive the shock of an oil and gas market collapse we remain ironically dependent on foreign consumption to pay local bills.

That we have no collective understanding of those bigger problems while we magnify and make a mess of the small ones shows that perhaps we have not yet developed the maturity level required to be running our own affairs. An estimated fifty percent of this country's revenues have been lost to mismanagement and outright theft over the years, with not one single solitary soul ever having to shoulder the burden of consequence of actions.

We will gather to ooh and aah at the annual celebratory fireworks display and cross another year older off our collective calendar, but writing this I find myself confused as to what we as a nation are celebrating at all.

Be that as it may, happy independence 2014 Trinidad & Tobago.

And may God Bless our nation....

Communicating Ineffectively... (Explaining the Inexplainable)

The Minister of Communication has done himself and the Prime Minister a disservice by attempting to spin his way out of the National Awards fiasco, the latest in a rapid series of communications and public relations gaffes plaguing the government ever since he was appointed to the post. Diluting his own credibility, he strains to make connections where none exist to explain the protocol collapse that led to the Prime Minister being embarrassed once again, and rather than look for clever ways to deflect he should come straight with the public without fudge, misdirection or precedent, just admit that it was badly handled and hope that his mea culpa could find favor with a public now weary of real and imagined scandals.

The only questions that needs to be answered here surround whose haire-brained idea was this in the first place. How was this scheme hatched? Who were the plotters? Why was it allowed to appear as policy by vapse and why was the Prime Minister left so exposed to the fall out caused by an amateurish lack of diligence and observance of protocol?

For my part I was stumped and said so publicly upon learning of the announcement, that two men that the government and all of its supporters have publicly declared to be scamps and scoundrels could receive the nation's highest awards while having so many damning allegations hanging over their heads, allegations which were put there by the very people now looking to sanitize and award them. Clearly reeking of cheap politics designed to secure votes,  apparently not enough were fooled to give the thing even the remotest shred of credibility by the public at large. Worse, since everyone reliably expected Basdeo Panday to be the one to reject and pour scorn on the offer, now that Patrick Manning has beaten him to it one can only guess at the hurried behind the scenes negotiations taking place with him and his family to avert further humiliation, and the Panday clan may well walk away from this one with not only a national award, but smiling all the way to the bank.

An Ambassadorship for Bas? A Senate seat for Mikela? A lifetime supply of chauffeur driven spa treatments for Oma? Perhaps a full Presidential blanket pardon for all prior sins? Why, the sky is practically the limit here for a man in Singapore apparently so cut off from the rest of the world and Trinidad politics he has to appoint his daughter to speak for him on all manner of issues including whether or not he might possess a Facebook account.

Having spoken to him recently in public where we continued a chat that we were having over the course of some weeks on that same social media site notwithstanding I am amused at the lengths big people go to when they conspire to deceive, but perhaps I too should be prepared to suspend critical disbelief and accept that he has none, if only for appearances sake.

But back to the Honorable Minister of Trade, Communications and Embarrassing Gaffes, I find it strange that all of his communicating comes in the form of one way statements that are not themselves open to challenge. His position that Manning made an announcement a year before someone who was to receive an award was given the award is of no value here because it misses the critical point that the public hasn't, that this was the announcement of the granting of national awards to political enemies, all in the name of mending political fences, a purpose for which the awards were never intended.

The fact that Patrick manning behaved like a spoilt child and threw the mother of all tantrums over the award was simply Manning being Manning, but the fact that the government gave him the opportunity to 'buss so much style' on them says more than the Minister's statement ever could.

Bharath's assertion that the awards have been refused in the past and cited an example where one was threatened to be returned over religious and symbolic reasons again has nothing to do with the overt politicizing of the thing for what appears to be selfish gain on the part of the government, and this is where he (Vassant) misses the point.

This government that has been stellar and spot on with deliverables and service but has been woefully bad at communicating their achievements, and even worse when they try to plot clever conspiracies for ignoble ends.

Their overwhelming success at actual governance is lost in silence due to the failure of their communications machinery to convert the skeptical public to informed and trusting supporters, so they continuously turn to chicanery and subterfuge to achieve the same end, engaging in cheap politicking that I fear may eventually be their ruin.

A conundrum in itself, someone or someones set out to fail and succeeded. The Office of the Minister of Communications itself should not be used as a platform for political spin but for facilitating communication between the people and the government. With less than a year remaining in Office perhaps the Minister should learn that, as this government could hardly afford another Minister publicly failing to perform.

Malignant Narcissism and Hubris...

With word from Internet search giant Google that for all intents and purposes what we have come to know as emailgate is nothing but a cleverly fabricated hoax, there can be nothing left to the political leader of the People's National Movement and promoter in chief of the motion but to resign and face the courts.

Thrown into the black hole of internal jurisprudence, I am sure it has come as a massive surprise to him (Rowley) and his co-conspirators that the results to the queries put before them could have been delivered with such speed, and now surely all who were involved have to be concerned with what exactly is going to happen next.

Listening to PNM spin doctor in chief Faris al Rawi trying to salvage something from it while looking ashen and defeated on live television, it is clear that no amount of beating is going to get this now dead horse to move. Perhaps the best thing Faris can do right now is to revert to the lawyer that he was when he first cautioned against proceeding along this treacherous course.

And now that the chickens have come home to roost the talk in legal circles is pointing straight to criminal libel as the claims and accusations made, if proven to be as completely and as patently false as Google thinks they are, may well land Keith Rowley and all who sat around that Goodwood Park table that fateful night and concocted this mad enterprise in some serious hot water.

What could they have possibly been thinking, that the government built on virtually some of the best and brightest legal minds in the western hemisphere was not going to figure out how to bring this to a conclusion? Who was advising and who was taking notes? And if sentences are dished out who else besides Keith Rowley stand to take some jail?

The thing just got serious, and while many who were beating the drums of war have now gone silent, those who were warning that this might just boomerang have been proven to be sage in their estimate.

Going forward from here Keith Rowley faces a barrage of lawsuits that may well crush him, but he has no one but himself to blame. We kept calling for the evidence, for him to provide the whistleblower, to give information on the alleged illegal SIA sweep that was then reconfigured and repackaged as emails in the hopes that a case could be built for content, but it was never provided.

Now all of his comrades and friend-with-benefits such as David Abdulah, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and Fixin' T&T all have decisions to make, should they stick with him? Or jettision in the hope of a soft landing and to fight another day?

Others may not be so lucky. With his fortunes inextricably tied to Keith Rowley's, the OWTU's Ancil Roget may not be able to escape resigning as well as he made available the might and manpower of the oilfield workers union in pursuit of Rowley's mad dream. What can he now say to the thousands who followed him on his escalating fallacy? Sorry? My bad?

In instances such as these the only apologies the people need to hear is the apology for abuse of office. Beyond that pack your bags and hope for the best, as all those who have slandered, maligned, libeled and otherwise defamed the characters of the Prime Minister, the Attorney General, the Leader of Government Business and Minister of Housing, the Minister of National Security, the Minister of Works and the entire government in general all in the name of a naked grab for power may suddenly find themselves calculating things such as personal net worth in preparation to pay some hefty legal fees and court awards.

What it is they say about those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad? Keith Rowley's rise to power has been a testimony of the destruction of careers, ironically culminating in his own but not unexpectedly so.

I remember quoting Professor Patrick Watson in my column written the day after the accusations were laid in the Parliament, where the goodly Professor opined – 'If this is true it would be the end of the government, if it isn't it would be the end of Keith Rowley's career.' Now he (Rowley) finds himself literally hung on his own petard and, with nothing to verify his claims but a fistful of fake pages and a headful of hubris, may well rue the day he decided to embark on a journey of malice to attack the government with made up facts based on circumstance he fully well knew to be a lie.

Post Turtles & the General Hospital...

While stitching a cut on the hand of a 75 year old farmer whose hand was caught in his gate while working, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man.

Eventually the topic got around to politicians and their role as our leaders.

The farmer said, "Well, as I see it, most politicians are 'Post Turtles'.''

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was.

The old farmer said, "When you're driving down a road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

The old farmer saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain. "You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, he's elevated beyond his ability to function, and you just wonder what kind of dumb fool put him up there to begin with."



I usually write my columns in the morning, and this morning i woke up so conflicted i almost did not want to write one. There is so mach bad leadership being displayed by politicians and public officials on both sides of the political divide that to write a column dedicated to post turtles as defined above might well use up the entire paper, but ruminating on the reality of post turtles currently in the public domain I could think of no better example than the following:



Earlier this week one of the evening news shows sent an undercover camera into the General Hospital to show the public just how bad things were for patients, and the shortage of beds was highlighted as the major issue plaguing the institution. People were shown sleeping on chairs, benches and floors, with family members and visitors huddled over trying to make a space for their loved ones. In response and as explanation, the Minister of Health told the nation that the reason that a bed shortage exists in the hospital is because people go there for treatment and refuse to leave, or that families drop their elderly and infirm off and never come back for them.

To quote a former Minister and vociferous Member of Parliament, WHAAAAAAAAT????

Really Mister Minister?


Now, I am not saying that they may not be some truth to what he is saying, but did he really think this through before bringing such a silly excuse to the public? 

Surely he has to be aware as to how inept it made him appear to break the failure of the four point five billion dollar Ministry of Health to bed squatting, and the fact that he did not include when exactly over his term in office that he and they were made aware that bed squatting was crippling the hospital, what the plans were to combat the scourge, or how soon they intend to embark upon rectifying it made him look less the manager that we all assumed him to be.



But before we go forward bigger questions have to be asked, questions such as, when a patient is discharged after treatment, can they refuse to go? And what are the options available to hospital management then? What are the legal ramifications and precedents here? Can anyone choose a bed anywhere, claim it as their own and live there permanently? Can this be done at private hospitals as well? Hotels? Or does this only apply to the General Hospital?



If the nation was not at one time dealing with the distraction of the Constitutional Amendment Bill while waiting to get down into the meat of the organised rape that Lifesport is appearing to be, then surely this Minister would be in the hot seat right now trying to defend the level of ineptitude that allows our health care sector to be run this way, and i daresay, perhaps as affable and as nice a guy as the Minister is, that perhaps he might not be the right man for the job.

Personally i refuse to accept the Minister’s explanations and reject it out of hand. This is at worst a mid-level management issue, at best a floor supervisor’s job and not a problem that should be allowed to force other patients to sleep on the floor nor require a Minister of Government to be making silly excuses.

A glaring example of mismanagement and in light of all the other public building shut downs, what might be the situation should the Public Services Association apply the same yardstick it applied to the Immigration Department and other government buildings to the General Hospital?



Would the hospital be shut down and literally put lives at risk in the name of saving lives?



It is an indictment against us the voting public that we have not called for the resignation of the Hospital Administrator and insist that a care taking management team be installed with the mandate to reverse this horrific state of affairs within a specific and reasonable time-frame.

We cannot be spending the equivalent of the entire national budget of Grenada on health care and our people have to settle for their loved ones sleeping on the floor. One percent of this Ministry's budget could build a multi-story hostel complete with bed space for the abandoned if the Ministry and Minister were so inclined, so why allow such nonsense into the public domain?



I put to the Minister of Health that his excuse is simply not good enough and that it is time that public institutions be repositioned in service of the people who own them, and if those who are placed in charge cannot deliver, then they need to be replaced by those who can.