Politics: The Inconvenient Truths.

I'm sure I missed some inconvenient truths in here. Feel free to add to this in the comments.

Unlike a lot of people here in Trinidad and Tobago, I don't watch television. I'm immune to televised rhetoric. The radio in the pickup, once 95.1 FM started playing Patrick Manning's jingle - a late entry for road march, no more - caused the CD player to take over my amusement. The newspapers, as much as I appreciate the media, haven't really seemed to try to make issues the forefront. Yet?

In my sojourns throughout Trinidad, I try to get a feel for people's sentiments. I've met the die hard UNC's along with the die hard PNM's. I've met fellow politically disenfranchised - perhaps I gravitate to them and vice versa. I've read a stab at the addition of information technology into someone's political manifesto which wasn't too bad and yet wasn't very inspiring.

I got a coke in a plastic bottle at Burger King today because Gulf City continues not having water. In line, I explained the situation to another queued and mentioned that the women's room has water for the washing of hands and yet it seems men don't need to wash their hands. We laughed at the idiocy but how often has water actually come up in the election? 

Politics be damned. People need water.

Moving right along - the Aluminium Smelter. Someone said that if the UNC/COP won, the smelter would be stopped and I told them that the UNC started the whole smelter thing anyway. It's unpopular to say, but it's true. So I have doubts that an allied victory will make the smelter suddenly blow away. And years ago, I found out that at least some of the land discussed was cleared for Industrial development in the 1970s. Don't like the smelter? Maybe something more noxious will move in unless the zoning is changed.

I was countered with, "If Kamla wins she'll get rid of the Property Tax!". I smiled. I said that the property tax will remain because the treasury needs money. Yes, the PNM dominated government wasted money. That doesn't remove the fact that the country needs money in the future. And that means - guess what - the property tax reform will hold, perhaps with a few changes for political posturing.

Someone brought up that squatters have to pay the property tax. Again I smiled. First the squatter's houses will  need assessment numbers to fit into the system, which means that they have to be assessed - and all the postage in the world isn't going to change the fact that the property tax reform will bog itself down. And for those of you who don't know, that means that the real estate market will freeze since demonstrating an annual property tax payment is necessary before one sells land.

On a trip to the Ministry of Agriculture last week, I was talking with a helpful woman regarding subsidies. All those people squatting on agricultural land with farmer's licenses are in for a rude awakening when they go to renew and have to demonstrate that they have rights to the land.

Meanwhile, praedial larceny and lack of water plague most small farmers. And we come full circle to the insistent issues of crime and policing from violent crime to white collar crime, described more eloquently as 'corruption'.

While at first I thought calling a snap election was a farce and a last ditch effort by Patrick Manning to retain the Office of Prime Minister, I now see it for the genius of Trinbagonian politicians. By keeping everyone off balance, the political platforms aren't set and the inconvenient truths remain hidden- to the nauseating beat of attempts to win the political road march.

And the hungry ghosts eat it up, remaining uninformed on real issues. Perhaps a swimsuit contest is in order?