DAVID E BRATT

If the head­lines in the news­pa­pers over the past week are to be trust­ed, the coun­try seems to be back on track. Back in Tri­ni mode. Whew! For a cou­ple of weeks in 2010, I thought we were se­ri­ous about be­com­ing First World. Imag­ine life in a First World Trinidad? No bac­cha­nal. No fetes. No­body to ma­co or ma­m­aguy? Peo­ple se­ri­ous on the ra­dio, dis­cussing the life cy­cle of the West In­di­an man­a­tee or the ef­fect of air pol­lu­tion on African Sea Co­conut sales or the re­la­tion­ship be­tween win­ing and the lifestyle of the French Cre­ole? Even Ben­ny is com­ing back so you know mon­ey is be­gin­ning to flow. Ques­tions abound. Is he com­ing to de­sign for the Peo­ple's Band or the Catholic Band?

Now that the 31-year-old ju­nior tech­ni­cian has re­signed, af­ter find­ing out that she does not have enough de­grees and needs more in­put from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, is Ben­ny com­ing to head the SIA or the SSA or the ASS or an­oth­er one of our se­cret ser­vice agen­cies? We must have more se­cret ser­vice agen­cies per capi­ta than any oth­er coun­try in the world.

Will the project man­ag­er be ac­cord­ed a front row seat so that he can pub­licly ask Ben­ny, "Am I still a fool­ish man?" Or will he ap­pear on stage with the mas­ter and to­geth­er with his suc­ces­sor bark for Ben­ny? Af­ter the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er found the once elu­sive pi­ano hid­den un­der some lay­ers of cloth (is this what he is paid to do?), some­body found a cougar in some­body's home in Val­sayn. A for­mer Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, he of "par­a­digm" fame, stepped up to ex­plain that there was noth­ing wrong with that, as if cougars lim­ing in Val­sayn gar­dens was no big thing. Per­haps he mis­took the type of cougar be­ing de­scribed. The may­or of Port-of-Spain con­tin­ued his ef­forts to clean up the city by in­form­ing dri­vers of il­le­gal­ly parked cars that their cars would be wrecked and hauled away to a "se­cret place" some­where in Trinidad. Scep­tics im­me­di­ate­ly asked what ho­tel in cen­tral he was re­fer­ring to and if the at­ten­dants spoke Span­ish.

Cars seemed to be in the news. The plan to le­galise "PH" taxis, a typ­i­cal Trick­i­da­di­an screw-up if there was ever one-you at­tempt to solve the prob­lem of no trans­porta­tion by by­pass­ing the ob­vi­ous so­lu­tion (in­crease trans­por- tation) and make up a new prob­lem (as­sist peo­ple break­ing the law)-hit an­oth­er road­block when it was de­ter­mined that many in­sur­ance com­pa­nies might not want to in­sure them. No doubt some­one in the Gov­ern­ment would start his own in­sur­ance agency.

A politi­cian from Ja­maica ad­vised lo­cal politi­cians to de­vel­op healthy re­la­tion­ships with the me­dia, say­ing they need­ed to be "com­fort­able in bed." Ex­cept for Andy John­son, who is look­ing dis­tinct­ly un­com­fort­able with each pass­ing month, the PP should feel com­fort­able with this.

An­oth­er group call­ing it­self "Con­cerned Na­tion­al Cit­i­zens" marched against "Ma­ma Kam­la and Pa­pa Dooks." They were re­al­ly se­ri­ous. News­pa­pers re­port­ed that they marched in the "pour­ing rain." Wow! The on­ly oth­er time Tri­nis do that is on J'Ou­vert morn­ing. The Con­cerned Na­tion­al Cit­i­zens turned out to be an­oth­er group of in­vestors in Cli­co who had lost mon­ey in a high-risk mon­ey mar­ket scheme. Talk about bold­face! You make a pri­vate in­vest­ment and when you lose out, you want the tax­pay­ers to pay you back every­thing you lost and you call­ing it a na­tion­al con­cern?

Some cit­i­zens! Some con­cern!

At the end of the week that was, all and sundry seemed to be hav­ing a good time fet­ing. The "White Fri­day" Natuc protest looked nice. Every­one wore white and af­ter the march, as it was a Fri­day, every­one went home. Have you ever seen a protest march on any oth­er day but a Fri­day? Af­ter "White Fri­day" up north, we had some­thing called "Sexy in Black" down south but that was an­oth­er fete.

There's no racism in Tri­ni protests or fetes. Talk­ing about fetes, the new PM was set to at­tend her sec­ond of the week by mak­ing a "guest ap­pear­ance" at the UNC Dol­lar Fete, I thought "guest ap­pear­ance" was for singers and dancers but times, they're a-chang­ing.

Se­cu­ri­ty for the WASA fete was said to be sim­i­lar to that for the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and CHOGM, those well-known events that put T&T high up on­to the in­ter­na­tion­al scene.

Con­cern how­ev­er was raised by some po­lice­men that rou­tine po­lice work, like pre­vent­ing kid­nap­pings or the break­ing of traf­fic lights, or solv­ing mur­ders would suf­fer. Not a prob­lem re­spond­ed a cou­ple of high-pro­file min­is­ters, "we will be there!" Fi­nal­ly, as if to show the re­spect we have for health and life, there came the ex­pect­ed call for re­sump­tion of hang­ings by var­i­ous re­li­gious lead­ers and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try de­cid­ed to al­low the im­por­ta­tion of those par­a­digms of good health, frozen fries and re­fined sug­ar, free en­try in­to T&T. The min­is­ter is "work­ing," said the head of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion.

Thank God some­body is.