One of the par­ents who lost her neonate in the tragedy that be­fell par­ents in April at the PoS Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal NICU, said she was hes­i­tant to take le­gal ac­tion for her loss. She is an avid sup­port­er of this ad­min­is­tra­tion and al­though she un­der­stands the fragili­ty of a preterm in­fant, she felt no one ap­pre­ci­at­ed her loss and pain. She thinks per­sons en­trust­ed to main­tain poli­cies are not mind­ful of their role, or they meet a bu­reau­cra­cy with the well-known ex­cuse of lack of re­sources. She men­tioned wit­ness­ing big build­ings be­ing com­mis­sioned, hefty monies spent on en­ter­tain­ment by the RHAs, min­is­ters ex­pen­sive­ly dressed at­tend­ing so­cial func­tions, while she had to come to terms with her loss. There ap­pears to be a dis­con­nect be­tween the po­lit­i­cal elites and the peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing.

It was the 2022 Paria tragedy that opened her eyes when at­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har called for an ex-gra­tia pay­ment of $5 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for the four fam­i­lies whose rel­a­tives died and de­mand­ed the re­moval of the Paria ex­ec­u­tives. An FOI re­quest re­vealed Paria paid Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, close to $9 mil­lion in le­gal fees, while the CoE cost $15.68 mil­lion.

Ra­mad­har lament­ed, “We know the court de­lays can be over­whelm­ing, and for those who have lim­it­ed or no re­sources, it could be an act of suf­fo­ca­tion. It is a slow-burn­ing crime for this mat­ter not to be re­solved and for every day that pass­es adds to the or­gy of hor­ror and shame­less­ness that we now see in this so­ci­ety…we see le­gal fees paid $21 mil­lion and not a cent for the fam­i­lies. How can we say we are not go­ing to look af­ter these chil­dren?”

Let us not for­get it is tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey that paid Pe­ter­son and con­tin­ues to pay salaries to mem­bers of the Paria board who hired him, mon­ey which could have gone in­to com­pen­sa­tion.

When pro­cess­ing un­for­tu­nate deaths, some re­cov­er with ther­a­py, oth­ers chan­nel their loss in­to some­thing good -like start­ing an NGO, oth­ers need le­gal com­pen­sa­tion to “let un­car­ing bu­reau­crats pay,” some wal­low in de­pres­sion, while oth­ers fes­ter hate, re­sent­ment, and the need for vengeance.

This week, Haiti wit­nessed a griev­ing gang leader, who lost his son, let out his wrath on tra­di­tion­al faith heal­ers, who he blamed for prac­tic­ing “witch­craft” on his son. His gang killed 184 per­sons. Such is the need for ret­ri­bu­tion.

In the USA, Lui­gi Man­gione al­leged­ly shot the Unit­ed Health­care Group CEO, seem­ing­ly to high­light in­jus­tice in health­care. This 26-year-old af­flu­ent, com­put­er sci­ence grad­u­ate suf­fered from chron­ic back pain de­spite un­der­go­ing surgery in 2023. Three 9mm shell cas­ings from the crime scene had the words “de­lay,” “de­ny” and “de­pose” writ­ten across them, the ti­tle of a 2010 book cri­tiquing the in­sur­ance in­dus­try.

It was re­veal­ing that many on so­cial me­dia voiced sup­port for him, of­fer­ing to pay his le­gal bill. Some wrote about the “ex­or­bi­tant salary of CEOs,” some about ad­min­is­tra­tors nev­er “fac­ing the con­se­quences of their de­nials,” and “it is the CEO who should be called a killer.” Man­gione seems like an avenger to those who felt the in­jus­tice in the health­care sys­tem. Some wrote against “big busi­ness and cap­i­tal­ists who seem more con­cerned about prof­its than peo­ple’s needs and care.” Unit­ed Health­care Group is the fourth biggest mon­ey mak­er in the US.

Man­gione seem­ing­ly tweaked the phi­los­o­phy of the late Ted Kaczyn­s­ki (the Un­abomber), whose man­i­festo jus­ti­fied send­ing let­ter bombs to protest against tech­nol­o­gy and ex­ploita­tion. He be­lieved Kaczyn­s­ki’s ac­tions “are more ac­cu­rate­ly seen as those of an ex­treme po­lit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion­ary…and it’s sim­ply im­pos­si­ble to ig­nore how pre­scient many of his pre­dic­tions about mod­ern so­ci­ety turned out.”

Man­gione dis­ap­proved of how Kaczyn­s­ki ‘maimed in­no­cent peo­ple’ and sug­gest­ed a more tar­get­ed ap­proach to high-rank­ing of­fi­cials would pro­duce the ‘sym­bol­ic take­down.’ He be­lieved “peace­ful protest has got­ten us nowhere” and that “‘vi­o­lence nev­er solved any­thing” is a state­ment ut­tered by “cow­ards and preda­tors.” He sees him­self as car­ry­ing on the fight. Will his ac­tion now spurn a copy­cat Avengers?

Should we be con­cerned in T&T? Well, the 2005 PoS dust­bin bomber is still at large but thank­ful­ly, the po­lice quick­ly ap­pre­hend­ed the 27-year-old man who set fire to and spray paint­ed an­ti-COVID-19 slo­gans on the Min­istry of Health’s of­fice at Park Street on Au­gust 8, 2020. In the days lead­ing up to the fire, mes­sages were spray-paint­ed at oth­er build­ings in PoS.

How­ev­er, with­in the last three months, more peo­ple have post­ed on so­cial me­dia that they wished Yasin Abu Bakr was still around. This con­cerns me, as peo­ple are seem­ing­ly still seek­ing out an avenger to fight in­jus­tice.