Clevon Raphael

For all its mis­steps and self-in­flict­ed wounds, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion de­serves ku­dos for do­ing what no oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty in of­fice has ever at­tempt­ed to do-de­liv­er an an­nu­al re­port card on its ac­com­plish­ments or lack there­of.

The pub­li­ca­tions high­light­ing the PP Gov­ern­ment's achieve­ments over the last years and which ap­peared in the dai­ly news­pa­pers last week are in­valu­able in­stru­ments to give the elec­torate the op­por­tu­ni­ty to as­sess what the coali­tion was able to de­liv­er in keep­ing with the promis­es made dur­ing the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign.

Trinida­di­ans/To­bag­o­ni­ans are ac­cused of hav­ing short mem­o­ries so it is in their in­ter­est-and the PP's too-to have in print a score­card that would be up­dat­ed an­nu­al­ly un­til the com­ple­tion of the ad­min­is­tra­tion's five-year term. I am hold­ing on to my copies so that in 2015, a fair and prop­er as­sess­ment could be made as to whether the regime's boast of hav­ing a lot to cel­e­brate is valid or not.

How­ev­er, a cur­so­ry glance at the sec­ond an­nu­al pub­li­ca­tions shows the regime has in fact been do­ing a lot of work, but the big ques­tion is if the peo­ple are feel­ing that it is re­al­ly work­ing in their in­ter­est. A very good rea­son for this is that un­for­tu­nate­ly the neg­a­tives af­fect­ing the Gov­ern­ment are get­ting more promi­nence than the pos­i­tives.

But in spite of this, on­ly an ad­min­is­tra­tion con­fi­dent that it is se­ri­ous about trans­paren­cy and dili­gent­ly go­ing af­ter the peo­ple's busi­ness would dare take that quan­tum leap be­cause, as I said, the elec­torate would have some­thing tan­gi­ble to com­pare man­i­festo pledges with ac­tu­al de­liv­er­ables dur­ing its stew­ard­ship.

In this same way we would like to see Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley pub­lish­ing a sim­i­lar doc­u­ment point­ing out things like how many al­ter­na­tive sug­ges­tions the loy­al op­po­si­tion made to the PP Gov­ern­ment, which were not ac­cept­ed, those ac­cept­ed, and so on.

Mean­while, a sig­nif­i­cant oc­cur­rence took place at the PP's sec­ond an­niver­sary bash in cen­tral Trinidad last Thurs­day. I re­fer to the ap­pear­ance of the nat­ur­al neme­sis of any­one op­posed to the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment-Sug­ar Aloes. While the PP big­wigs were falling over them­selves boast­ing how they were able to get the self-con­fessed "PNM-till-ah-dead" bard on the PP stage, a lot of cit­i­zens like me were aghast won­der­ing how come no one else could be found to be the sur­prise guest per­former.

Why on such an oc­ca­sion was Sug­ar Aloes, who has nev­er put wa­ter in his mouth to crit­i­cise, some­times in a deroga­to­ry man­ner, those who form the core sup­port of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, cho­sen to "ser­e­nade" the Prime Min­is­ter? I am yet to fath­om why all the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans who are less po­lit­i­cal­ly tox­ic and even PP-friend­ly were by­passed in favour of some­one who would be the plan­et's hap­pi­est man if the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion were to be re­moved from the cor­ri­dors of pow­er in the morn­ing.

Who among the lead­er­ship of the UNC be­lieve that by giv­ing him a hand­some pay night Aloes would draw PNM sup­port­ers to the house of the PP? That and a bat­tle­ship sail­ing on the Beetham High­way they would nev­er see. To his cred­it, he Aloes put down a beau­ti­ful ren­di­tion of the pop­u­lar hit She's Roy­al, but read­ing his body lan­guage while "ser­e­nad­ing" the Prime Min­is­ter I did not get the feel­ing he was gen­uine­ly cred­it­ing the lyrics of that song to the Prime Min­is­ter.

As far as I am con­cerned he was on­ly there to "make some dol­lars." His ap­pear­ance brought some rather dis­turb­ing re­spons­es from two promi­nent fig­ures-for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day and cul­tur­al ac­tivist Pearl Ein­tou Springer. Pan­day went com­plete­ly over­board say­ing that In­do-Tri­nis had lost their self-re­spect and dig­ni­ty by ap­plaud­ing Aloes that night. He sure­ly couldn't be se­ri­ous and I could on­ly at­tribute the crowd's en­thu­si­as­tic re­sponse as a case of mo­men­tary am­ne­sia.

And you can bet your last cent that come next Car­ni­val sea­son, Aloes would con­tin­ue his vit­ri­olic at­tacks on the "en­e­mies" of the PNM, pri­mar­i­ly the PP regime. Tell me about bit­ing the hands that feed you. Miss Springer evoked from me a piti­ful head shake by claim­ing that She's Roy­al was meant on­ly for African women. She would have us be­lieve that the line "And when I am asked what a good woman is made of..." meant that they can on­ly be found among those of African ori­gin. That is tak­ing Afro­cen­tri­cism to a new low.