“Some­body take ‘One Love’ off the shelf/Then the ‘One Love’ boys start to sell out dey self/Some­body go­ing to end all this talk about race/But they can’t tell me that with a straight, straight face.”

—David Rud­der, Mad­man’s Rant

“Put Jack in the box.” “Bury him in the Lopinot ceme­tery.” “Hunt and tie-strap them,” and with­out miss­ing a beat, these politi­cians will try to con­vince us they’re se­ri­ous about vi­o­lence, es­pe­cial­ly among school chil­dren. Re­al­ly? Pi­cong and rum shop ole talk is one thing. In­flam­ma­to­ry, vi­o­lent lan­guage is an­oth­er. Have they gorn mad, or is it just an­oth­er day in a strange land?

We are at a cru­cial junc­ture in his­to­ry with de­clin­ing en­er­gy pro­duc­tion, ris­ing costs, forex woes, US tar­iffs, and the pre­cip­i­tous frac­tur­ing of the in­ter­na­tion­al rules-based or­der, cre­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty. How do we ex­ploit pre­vail­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties at the com­mu­ni­ty and na­tion­al lev­els and chart the course for sus­tain­able growth?

These tu­mul­tuous times re­quire sober re­flec­tion. In­stead, we hear out­landish promis­es that can’t be ful­filled, at least with­out get­ting us in a fi­nan­cial jam. “This is it, this is it,” the mad­man rants; “I’ll fix every sin­gle house in To­ba­go.” “We’ll start wage ne­go­ti­a­tions at ten per cent.” “I’ll stop noise pol­lu­tion.” “Tax-free pen­sions,” “500 hous­ing units per week …” “We’ll re­move prop­er­ty tax, ...” but the Labasse land­fill still sick­ens peo­ple.

File tax on­line and burn gas to go down­town and pay. Spend a tor­tur­ous day get­ting a five-minute trans­ac­tion done at a pub­lic in­sti­tu­tion. Over 60 years, drugs, guns and am­mu­ni­tion are still com­ing through le­gal ports. Bil­lions are spent on tech­nol­o­gy, and old­er peo­ple must trav­el miles to prove they aren’t dead. If the peanut ven­dor from the six­ties re­turned from the dead, he would trip on the same pave­ment cracks around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Dwelling units are go­ing up in the over­crowd­ed Beetham, even be­yond the berm where some res­i­dents park ve­hi­cles. No politi­cian sees the un­fold­ing prob­lems of flood­ing, hy­giene, and en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter or cares about the un­sight­li­ness of the il­le­gal struc­tures, park­ing, and dump­ing on the high­way.

A colo­nial sys­tem sup­ports an in­equitable brand of ed­u­ca­tion. Schools look like chil­dren’s pris­ons, and some could eas­i­ly be tak­en for an­i­mal sheds. No wa­ter for all 24/7, af­ter six decades of promis­es. Elec­tric and ca­ble wires bel­ly over pave­ments, pos­ing dan­gers to pedes­tri­ans. Some hos­pi­tals’ grimy walls, beds, and stairs pro­claim these are high-risk build­ings.

Ceme­ter­ies look like waste­lands. In­stead of lush trees and fo­liage on hills and moun­tains, thou­sands of ug­ly bill­boards de­fine the land­scape ... con­spic­u­ous ex­am­ples of en­vi­ron­men­tal, health and qual­i­ty of life is­sues. Have po­lit­i­cal par­ties re­flect­ed on how the qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion, health, and the en­vi­ron­ment is linked to vi­o­lence and crime? If so, they should have the pri­or­i­ties right on their po­lit­i­cal plat­forms and in man­i­festos.

On bal­ance, the PNM man­i­festo pro­motes plans for gov­ern­ment trans­for­ma­tion and pub­lic ser­vice ef­fi­cien­cy, ed­u­ca­tion and cur­ricu­lum re­form, crime and jus­tice, health­care, sus­tain­able en­er­gy, eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, agri­cul­ture, com­mu­ni­ty and ur­ban de­vel­op­ment, and the cre­ative in­dus­tries, among oth­er strate­gies.

The UNC “mi­ni-fes­tos” high­light poli­cies on crime and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, ed­u­ca­tion and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, health­care re­form, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and the green econ­o­my, agri­cul­ture and the de­vel­op­ment of a cannabis in­dus­try, among oth­er ini­tia­tives. The mad­man’s brain was wired by weed! At the time of writ­ing, I hadn’t seen oth­er man­i­festos.

It is un­for­tu­nate can­di­dates waste time throw­ing ver­bal bull-pis­tle and den­i­grat­ing each oth­er. To get votes, they dan­gle car­rots, which can’t be de­liv­ered with­out sig­nif­i­cant re­sources to do so, in­ten­tion­al­ly with­hold­ing rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion from vot­ers on the cost of fur­ther en­trench­ing a cul­ture of free­ness and de­pen­dence on Gov­ern­ment. De­liv­er­ing 500 home units per week is equiv­a­lent to 26,000 units a year! Is that pos­si­ble, and at what cost?

It’s true that democ­ra­cy is a com­pet­i­tive sys­tem and wouldn’t sur­vive with­out con­tend­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties, but to para­phrase the beloved Bard, David Rud­der, this is not elec­tion­eer­ing; this is mad­ness. He said it suc­cinct­ly, “Some­body promis­ing jobs for all/ … Some­body promis­ing more po­lice cars/Some­body go­ing to take the coun­try far/Some­body putting all the ban­dits away …some­body promis­es to run all the bread, to push a world-class head, to abol­ish the tax, to give we the facts, to clean up the land” … Ah hear de mad man bawl, “Vote for we and we’ll set you free!” Yeh. Res­ur­rect truth.