Michael Del­blond

?"Where, I asked my­self, "is George Or­well of An­i­mal Farm fame when we need­ed him to share his per­spec­tive on our own lit­tle po­lit­i­cal An­i­mal Farm to ob­vi­ate any risk of pla­gia­rism?" For­mer Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter and po­lit­i­cal leader Alexan­der Bus­ta­mante is known to have ad­mon­ished his fol­low­ers, on the hus­tings, thus, "If I tell you to vote for a dog, vote for that dog!" In our own case, when the elec­tion bell rings, in an at­tempt to ex­ploit the eth­nic card, the mut­ed clar­i­on call ap­pears to be, "Zan­dolee, find yuh hole." Our for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams is sup­posed to have told the par­ty faith­ful, or at least im­plied, that if he pre­sent­ed a cra­paud (frog) in a PNM cra­vat (fat neck­tie) with bal­isi­er em­blem on the po­lit­i­cal plat­form, you should vote for it. That prob­a­bly led Lloyd Best to pro­duce a mock PNM man­i­festo fea­tur­ing a num­ber of frog-like crea­tures sport­ing the po­lit­i­cal par­ty's em­blem.

In our lit­tle "Cal­abash Al­ley" or "Mon­key Trace," one must learn to laugh and pick sense out of non­sense. So I sup­pose that Best was at­tempt­ing to draw at­ten­tion to the au­then­tic par­a­digm of gov­er­nance in ex­is­tence. For my part, I pre­fer to char­ac­terise it as one "bark­ing dog" with a num­ber of "hush pup­pies." I'll be in­debt­ed to any­one who can per­suade me oth­er­wise. In­ci­den­tal­ly, the Doc took to wear­ing a cra­vat him­self, which prob­a­bly sug­gest­ed that a cra­pau­doc­ra­cy was in full bloom. At a time when Dr Williams was be­ing seen as "a mes­si­ah in the mak­ing," po­lit­i­cal fire­brand Uri­ah But­ler, ar­guably a spent po­lit­i­cal force by then, saw him­self as the one to "cramp Williams' style." On re­turn­ing from the UK with "home rule in his back pock­et," the self-styled Chief Ser­vant threat­ened "to deal with mon­key Er­ic." But­ler may not have an­tic­i­pat­ed this, but some years lat­er, a mon­key ac­tu­al­ly turned up at Pres­i­dent's House–unan­nounced, un­ac­com­pa­nied and pre­sum­ably un­in­vit­ed.

The re­port might not have been con­sid­ered "news­wor­thy," save for the fact that our lit­tle cousin (ac­cord­ing to the an­thro­pol­o­gists) ob­served pro­to­col as far as dress (sport­ing a gold em­broi­dered waist­coat) and deco­rum were con­cerned. The cyn­ics lament­ed, "Well we re­al­ly reach, we know we gone to the dogs, but mon­keys too?" The more per­cep­tive took com­fort in the lit­tle mon­key's ob­vi­ous com­po­sure and dig­ni­fied, aris­to­crat­ic bear­ing. Was it send­ing a mes­sage to volatile politi­cians from its body lan­guage that "mon­key say, cool breeze!" Could it have been a case of "com­ing events cast­ing their shad­ows." I don't think that we should have held it against JJ (the mon­key's name) that, de­spite his im­pec­ca­ble de­meanour, he had been deaf­en­ing­ly silent. Af­ter all, "a wise head keeps a still tongue," and it's bet­ter to be thought a fool than to speak up and re­move all doubts. As the fel­low said, "It's bet­ter to be a shad­ow in the dark than a fool in the spot­light." But don't try telling this to the politi­cians.

Now, no one knows for sure what's go­ing on in ei­ther the head of mon­key or a politi­cian. But, giv­en a choice, I'd opt for en­ter­ing the for­mer's head. The Prime Min­is­ter is re­port­ed to have said re­cent­ly–half in jest I op­ti­misti­cal­ly pre­sume–that if all the liars in T&T were hanged, the pop­u­la­tion would de­crease dras­ti­cal­ly. So I make bold to in­ter that fic­tion is as much the back­bone of jour­nal­ism as it seems to be in pol­i­tics. So here I go spec­u­lat­ing again. How could we have been sure that our cel­e­brat­ed simi­an friend had not been sur­rep­ti­tious­ly pro­mot­ing the works of No­bel lau­re­ates Derek Wal­cott and not­ed West In­di­an writer George Lam­ming? Prob­a­bly be­ing a bit bored with his Dream on Mon­key Moun­tain, our lit­tle mon­key prob­a­bly de­cid­ed it's time he moved In a Fine Cas­tle. There's no in­di­ca­tion that he was un­com­fort­able In the Cas­tle of his Skin. In the event, he proved as adept at so­cial climb­ing as tree climb­ing. How any mon­key in his right mind would not have pre­ferred "a chat­ter­ing en­vi­ron­ment" like Par­lia­ment beats me.

Per­haps he came to the con­clu­sion that our par­lia­men­tar­i­ans had gone ba­nanas and were just the prover­bial bunch of nuts. That could prob­a­bly ex­plain any at­tempt to in­vei­gle the then Pres­i­dent to have him sworn in as an ad­di­tion­al min­is­ter to in­dulge his en­tire reper­toire of pranks and "mon­key tricks," in an en­vi­ron­ment where, for ob­vi­ous rea­sons, he'd go large­ly un­no­ticed. JJ might have been en­cour­aged by a re­port that a may­or, in some South Amer­i­can coun­try, lost his job to a don­key that was elect­ed by an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty. Any chance of some­thing like this hap­pen­ing here? In that event, I'd an­tic­i­pate an in­ter­minable pub­lic dis­cus­sion and aw­ful waste of pre­cious ju­di­cial time to de­ter­mine whether a don­key is nec­es­sar­i­ly an ass or an ass need be a don­key. Truth is some­times stranger than fic­tion in this neck of the woods! The Mon­key JJ, I un­der­stand, is now back in the jun­gle. What a pity, the de­ple­tion of gen­uine lo­cal po­lit­i­cal tal­ent be­ing the jun­gle's gain.