Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Face­book and the let­ters to the ed­i­tor sec­tion of the news­pa­pers are a tidal pool of com­ment on the elec­tions. One word which keeps pop­ping up to the sur­face like a stub­born turd is "is­sues." "We not re­al­ly hear­ing the po­lit­i­cal par­ties deal­ing with the is­sues. Is jes a set of pi­cong!" "I still wait­ing to hear about crime, cor­rup­tion and health­care." Such re­marks com­mit­ted to ink are per­fect­ly rea­son­able. Speak­ing of my­self, I know that crime has de­vel­oped in me som­nam­bu­list ten­den­cies. I of­ten find my­self roam­ing the dark­ened cor­ri­dors of my home in the small hours of the morn­ing, peer­ing through the win­dow look­ing for that face in the shad­ows that will even­tu­al­ly come for us all. The mind does not make the dis­tinc­tion be­tween a pom­pek bark elicit­ed by the pres­ence of an­oth­er dog or the pres­ence of a mur­der­er un­der the stairs.

Per­verse fan­ta­sy mud­dles my trau­ma­tised mind to the ex­tent that I con­struct elab­o­rate sce­nar­ios in which I am able to suc­cess­ful­ly hack to pieces the first ban­dit who does not an­tic­i­pate that I am armed, but I am felled by the bul­lets of the oth­er two whom I failed to spot. If that sounds de­tailed, it is be­cause it re­plays in my head in­ces­sant­ly with vari­a­tions on the theme. On the face of it, Kam­la ap­peared to have home court ad­van­tage, rid­ing a wave of pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment, giv­en a gift of in­nu­mer­able blun­ders and cal­cu­lat­ed de­cep­tions by the Gov­ern­ment, a sec­ond ear­ly elec­tion with the prece­dent of fail­ure at the first; as one PNM long-time ac­tivist put it, "this is Kam­la's elec­tion to lose." There have been enough mis­steps in the coali­tion co­ag­u­la­tion to sug­gest she could ac­com­plish that very task with ease.

On the CNC3 morn­ing pro­gramme, three PNM min­is­ters re­mind­ed me of some­thing that be­came clear, much to my cha­grin, dur­ing an elec­tion cam­paign many moons ago. When I worked on the Morn­ing Edi­tion I em­barked on a se­ries that would trawl the con­stituen­cies for views on what con­sti­tut­ed the "is­sues." In­vari­ably, I was as­sailed with the pedes­tri­an "roads, lights and wa­ter." Let's look at it for a mo­ment; this would lend cre­dence to the Gov­ern­ment's sug­ges­tion that con­tin­ued pub­lic com­ment on cor­rup­tion, of which it would ap­pear the Ude­cott is the foun­tain head, is overblown by the me­dia.

In­clud­ed in this list of bobol would of ne­ces­si­ty be the church in the Heights of Gua­napo, the mas­sive ex­pen­di­ture on sum­mits (for which we are yet to be pre­sent­ed with con­crete ev­i­dence of their bound­less ben­e­fits), the pop­u­la­tion be­ing culled at a stag­ger­ing rate by in­creas­ing­ly bar­barous killers, the con­se­quent de­vel­op­ment of gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties which the Gov­ern­ment has it­self ac­knowl­edged through the es­tab­lish­ment of HDC gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties, the com­plete col­lapse of pub­lic ser­vices from the Pass­port Of­fice to the Li­cens­ing De­part­ment, the in­sid­i­ous ero­sion of the right to free speech, alarm­ing al­le­ga­tions by Cepep work­ers that they must serve as seat fillers in PNM meet­ings or loss dey wuk, stri­dent at­tempts at char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion re­served for Dr Kei­th Row­ley, ab­ject fail­ure of the Po­lice Ser­vice to in­cul­cate an en­vi­ron­ment of law and or­der, notwith­stand­ing more puni­tive cen­sure for traf­fic trans­gres­sions.

This list could fill reams in an in­ter­minable ode to the cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ures of our gov­er­nance and state where peo­ple leave work when the type­writer rib­bon is ex­haust­ed, or when school fin­ish and you ha' to pick up de chirren. Yet one should not be sur­prised that even with an in­ex­haustible reser­voir of scan­dals, sim­ple in­fra­struc­tur­al de­fi­cien­cies are the dom­i­nant pre­oc­cu­pa­tion out there in voter­ville. The lack of elec­tric­i­ty out in the sticks seems like, in com­par­i­son to our oth­er na­tion­al con­cerns, a rur­al re­al­i­ty. That of course is true for those of us who have it, and do not have to wor­ry about a child falling asleep while study­ing at night and be­ing killed in the en­su­ing fire. Peo­ple like me who write week in week out are not bur­dened with the dai­ly drudgery of get­ting up at four in the morn­ing to go down to the stand­pipe at the cor­ner to fill buck­ets that on­ly bi­son are qual­i­fied to car­ry.

I can see a can­di­date at­tend­ing a meet­ing and head-nod­ding at­ten­tive­ly to these com­plaints, know­ing all it re­quires is a sim­ple, shal­low com­mit­ment that can nev­er be test­ed once that in­di­vid­ual is el­e­vat­ed on your shoul­ders to po­lit­i­cal of­fice.

This is pre­cise­ly why the Gov­ern­ment can say with alarm­ing ar­ro­gance that there is noth­ing to be gained by sub­mit­ting to a na­tion­al de­bate. Such a de­bate can on­ly be viewed in the con­text of po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy, giv­en that as far as the PNM is con­cerned, "we got the pub­lic cov­ered on the de­bate front." An­oth­er earth-shak­ing rev­e­la­tion is that the par­ty ma­chin­ery is sim­ply too busy to ded­i­cate any time to a de­bate which would serve on­ly the in­ter­ests of the peo­ple and not the par­ty. I sup­pose then that Bar­rack Oba­ma was run­ning a cam­paign for pres­i­den­cy of the Chica­go dis­trict of­fice of the Ro­tar­i­ans. Out­go­ing British Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown, who is third in the polls, took the time to par­tic­i­pate in such a process with two oth­er con­sid­er­ably more ap­peal­ing can­di­dates. Even fur­ther, when he screwed up, re­fer­ring to an el­der­ly woman as big­ot­ed when he was un­aware that his mi­cro­phone was still on, he re­turned to the scene of the of­fence, rapped on the woman's door and apol­o­gised with his own mouth!

In Trinidad, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, af­ter force­ful­ly en­ter­ing the pri­vate premis­es of a cit­i­zen, sub­se­quent­ly casts the man aside as a re­cal­ci­trant for­eign­er. The vil­i­fied Vil­lafana was vin­di­cat­ed ow­ing to wide­spread pub­lic sup­port on his brave stand. The Gov­ern­ment knows its elec­torate, and has cer­tain­ly made no over­tures to ro­mance the sig­nif­i­cant oth­er half of the pop­u­la­tion who were not born a PNM and ready to dead a PNM. What these peo­ple fail to re­alise be­cause of an in­sti­tu­tion­alised form of op­pres­sion is that their most ba­sic of de­sires elude them be­cause of the larg­er, deeply en­trenched, in­sti­tu­tion­al in­ep­ti­tude and graft. No wa­ter in your taps can be traced right back to a Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty that has been and con­tin­ues to be mis­man­aged. Crony­ism, nepo­tism, con­tracts for the boys while you la­dle wa­ter out of a green la­goon at the back of your house.

The op­po­si­tion has al­so failed to demon­strate why you de­serve more, oth­er than talk about com­put­ers for kids, more mon­ey for Cepep and all that guff. You should how­ev­er pay very close at­ten­tion to Kam­la's of­fer of a sys­tem of re­call for non-per­form­ing Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and term lim­its for Prime Min­is­ters with ten­den­cies to­ward mega­lo­ma­nia. The PNM has been right on track thus far, ap­peal­ing to their base and try­ing to en­cour­age the ap­a­thet­ic sup­port­er to get off the couch and vote. Can the op­po­si­tion con­vince the wider pop­u­la­tion that Ude­cott, Bernie Camp­bell and the two uniden­ti­fied men and all of the oth­er is­sues af­fect us all?

The next per­son the UNC brings in from abroad for cam­paign sup­port will have to be more than sim­ply a cam­paign wiz­ard, he will have to be an ac­tu­al wiz­ard.