Mar­tin George

?It is more a re­flec­tion of us as a na­tion, than it is just a re­flec­tion of the Op­po­si­tion par­ties, that there have been such a dearth and pauci­ty of depth, sub­stance and se­ri­ous is­sues on the plat­forms of the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions.�

Clowns and jesters

We have grown so ac­cus­tomed to hav­ing clowns and jesters in po­lit­i­cal of­fice here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, that we eas­i­ly ac­cept and�just as eas­i­ly swal­low the dri­v­el and tripe that they serve up to us on the na­tion­al plate, and when we analyse it all, we are no bet­ter off at the end of the day. What­ev­er the out­come of the UNC elec­tions, it is clear that the pop­u­la­tion in gen­er­al will end up as the losers, be­cause it is the same tired ac­tors on the same tired old stage, spout­ing the same tired old lines.�So be it Kam­jack or Ram­day who rules the roost, at the end of the day it re­mains more of the same. The in­evitable UNC post-in­ter­nal elec­tion blood­bath will en­sue, and al­liances will be formed and bro­ken and made and un­made, as they test the out­er lim­its of the tol­er­ance and ap­a­thy of a jad­ed, dis­in­ter­est­ed and dis­il­lu­sioned elec­torate.

Now, this ex­treme tol­er­ance and lax­i­ty by the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion would not mat­ter, if we had a slew of good, vi­able can­di­dates to choose from, and we could say that who­ev­er wins it does not mat­ter. How­ev­er, when one looks at the po­lit­i­cal land­scape on both sides of the di­vide, one is hard-pressed to find can­di­dates who are tru­ly mer­i­to­ri­ous and de­serv­ing of the ab­solute trust, con­fi­dence, and sup­port of the pop­u­la­tion. It is as the good Book says: "All have sinned and have fall­en short of the Glo­ry of God," and their pos­ings and pos­tur­ings are mere­ly the un­gain­ly pan­tomime of mim­ic men play­ing a game of mon­key see, mon­key do. Take, for ex­am­ple, the old Bas try­ing to be­smear and be­smirch Kam­la with al­le­ga­tions of un­con­trol­lable in­so­bri­ety, when Pan­day him­self has been drunk on pow­er and self-delu­sion for years of hav­ing tast­ed one too many times from the wine of as­ton­ish­ment, to the point where he can no longer as­ton­ish any­one, but still is ca­pa­ble of in­flict­ing great dis­ap­point­ment on those who adore and trust him the most.

�

One thing with the great Bas is that he nev­er fails to dis­ap­point. He al­ways finds ways to sink to new lows, and even his rak­ish and off-the-cuff flip­pan­cy and sense of hu­mour seem to have de­sert­ed him in his times of need, and he is left rasp­ing and rail­ing at the shack­les of ob­so­les­cence, ir­rel­e­vance and in­va­lid­i­ty. There is a young new breed aris­ing in the heart­land, and to re­vere and de­ify Bas is not part of their fu­ture. They would just as quick­ly re­vile and de­fy him, see­ing him as an anachro­nism and al­ba­tross around the neck of a pow­er-seek­ing Op­po­si­tion.

The race bo­gey

He has shown just how de­void and bereft of ideas he has be­come, that when he dug in his bag of tricks on the hus­tings, it was as emp­ty as Moth­er Hub­bard's cup­board, save and ex­cept for his old friend, the race bo­gey, which he threw out in des­per­a­tion on to the back of Jack, hop­ing to make it stick, but it on­ly back­fired on Bas and a cer­tain la­bel stuck to him in­stead. The on­ly re­al use­ful­ness which Bas has had of late on the na­tion­al scene, is be­ing a good source of com­ic re­lief, with his wit­ty one-lin­ers and barbed re­torts, and even that is de­sert­ing him now, like Par­taps flee­ing a sink­ing ship. Ramesh, for his part, has lived up to his two-face moniker and is as usu­al, run­ning with the hares while hunt­ing with the hounds.

Ramesh, we have fool­ish peo­ple in this na­tion, but we are not a na­tion of fools! How can any­one trust you, least of all Bas? He might lit­er­al­ly seek to sleep with the dev­il, in this case to get pow­er, but do you think he re­al­ly wants to con­tin­ue to live with the threat of con­stant fork and horn in his tail? If he does win, he will keep the Ram­day al­liance just long enough to stave off all le­gal and oth­er chal­lenges, and then he will be send­ing some­one back to the po­lit­i­cal ceme­tery, and thence the fiery fur­nace from whence he came. Tru­ly, the sad­dest thing about all the machi­na­tions and up­heavals of this UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions and about pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in gen­er­al, is that the more things change, the more they re­main the same, and the pop­u­la­tion and elec­torate are no bet­ter off at the end of the day.