Mar­tin George

?The Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Sport has no one but him­self to blame for this bur­geon­ing fi­as­co, as he con­tin­ues as the flag-bear­er of the on­go­ing "which Hunt" (no pun in­tend­ed), for the ar­chi­tects of this na­tion­al scan­dal, which shows no sign of flag­ging (pun very much in­tend­ed). Maybe, there was a time in the past when min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment and the na­tion's lead­ers could just trot out any sto­ry to a gullible pub­lic, who would re­ceive and di­gest it, no mat­ter how hard or dif­fi­cult it was to swal­low. The con­fused but ac­cept­ing pub­lic would then as­sume a po­si­tion of obei­sance and def­er­ence to the greater and wis­er think­ing of our lead­ers, but not any­more!

Ex­ten­sive In­ter­net ac­cess

With ac­cess to the In­ter­net and the world­wide Web, and with so­cial net­work­ing sites such as Face­book, cit­i­zens at all lev­els are able to look up, re­search and dou­ble, triple and quadru­ple check much of the in­for­ma­tion trot­ted out by peo­ple in au­thor­i­ty, and are able to come back, some­times, with more ac­cu­rate and re­li­able in­for­ma­tion than what is of­fi­cial­ly put out.

Hence, it was with re­fresh­ing can­dour that Min­is­ter of In­for­ma­tion Neil Parsan­lal re­port­ed to the na­tion that the Gov­ern­ment had, in­deed, made mis­takes, and that there was noth­ing wrong with the fact that a gov­ern­ment might make a mis­take or two, once it was not as a re­sult of sheer stu­pid­i­ty or an ob­sti­nate re­fusal to learn from pre­vi­ous mis­takes. It is cer­tain­ly a sign of ma­tu­ri­ty on the part of the Gov­ern­ment to come for­ward and ad­mit this. They have cer­tain­ly start­ed to im­prove their cred­i­bil­i­ty with the na­tion by do­ing so.

Los­ing face on Face­book

Sad­ly, though, these lessons in can­dour and hu­mil­i­ty have been lost on poor Gary, who is still in the Hunt for some sort of na­tion­al sal­va­tion and ab­so­lu­tion, af­ter the de­ba­cle of the cost of a $15,000-flag fly­ing all the way up and blow­ing up in his face to al­most the same $2-mil­lion price tag he was so stren­u­ous­ly try­ing to ob­fus­cate from the search­ing eyes of a keen and vig­i­lant pub­lic. All of this could have been avoid­ed, if the good­ly min­is­ter had not tried to in­sult the in­tel­li­gence of the pop­u­la­tion and had come clean on the is­sue. If peo­ple are query­ing the $2-mil­lion price of a flag, erect­ed on a "mon­ster flag­pole" at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, then don't take us for fools and say it on­ly cost around $15,000, be­cause the flag isn't sus­pend­ed in mid-air by it­self. It is fly­ing on a flag­pole, and thus the to­tal cost, which amounts to around $2 mil­lion, is what you should come forth and ex­plain to the pub­lic. This would have avoid­ed him hav­ing to so quick­ly lose face on Face­book and shut down his page.

Hunt­ing for na­tion­al pride

In­stead of us hunt­ing high and low in the skies for flut­ter­ing red, black and white signs of na­tion­al pride, how about some of our politi­cians and lead­ers start­ing act­ing as states­men and peo­ple of ho­n­our and dig­ni­ty in their deal­ings as they go about the na­tion's busi­ness? How about them try­ing to live as and be the very ex­em­plars that Min­is­ter Hunt be­moaned to be so lack­ing in the so­ci­ety? We have 41 mem­bers of the Low­er House and a pletho­ra of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters; how about them try­ing to lift them­selves out of the morass in­to which some of them have sunk and start act­ing as role mod­els and shin­ing ex­am­ples to the so­ci­ety? We don't have to hoist a flag on a $2-mil­lion erec­tion to look for na­tion­al pride. There are so many civ­il so­ci­ety groups and so­cial ac­tivists and NGOs and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or­gan­i­sa­tions which are a tremen­dous source of na­tion­al pride.

Can't buy na­tion­al pride

There are so many of our cit­i­zens who qui­et­ly go about the busi­ness of build­ing a na­tion and fos­ter­ing na­tion­al pride with­out look­ing for recog­ni­tion or re­ward. So many of our sports­men and ath­letes have in­fused us with strong feel­ings of na­tion­al pride with their ef­forts and achieve­ments, and have flown the flag all over the world for us with­out a $2-mil­lion price tag at­tached. Ato Boldon, Richard Thomp­son, Dwight Yorke, Bri­an Lara, Dar­ren Gan­ga and the boys have all per­formed and played their hearts out for this lit­tle rock in the sea that we love so much. The irony of it all is that Hase­ly Craw­ford him­self, af­ter whom the very sta­di­um is named, had al­ready done so much for us to spark na­tion­al pride and wasn't even giv­en a cheque for $2 mil­lion on his re­turn, thus prov­ing that you can­not buy na­tion­al pride.�

Learn­ing the les­son

When the So­ca War­riors qual­i­fied for the World Cup fi­nals in Ger­many, they were such a tremen­dous source of na­tion­al pride for us all.�Sit­ting in the sta­dia in Dort­mund and Nurem­berg, my heart was pound­ing so fierce­ly, and my chest swelled with na­tion­al pride as I saw our boys in red take the field and heard the thou­sands of fans cheer­ing them on. That was na­tion­al pride; not a soli­tary, over­priced flag fly­ing at the na­tion­al sta­di­um, which will be the butt of jokes for years to come. Let's get re­al and see that it is the or­di­nary cit­i­zens, who do ex­tra­or­di­nary acts of ser­vice for this coun­try who are much more ca­pa­ble of spark­ing feel­ings of na­tion­al pride. The pan­man, the po­et, the schol­ar, the teacher, the civ­il ser­vant who ex­cel at what they do, and do so for the good and ben­e­fit of the coun­try, are true sources of na­tion­al pride.�So let's hope, from the tone, tenor, thrust and grava­men of Min­is­ter Parsan­lal's re­cent state­ment, that the politi­cians are, in­deed, be­gin­ning to learn the les­son, and that there will no longer be a need for a "which hunt" for na­tion­al pride.