politics

So the State of Emergency is extended. Effective today, the curfew as announced by the Prime Minister will be from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. We all knew it would happen; the government has a luxury of a strong majority that made the Opposition no more than a lubricant for all of this. In fact, the Opposition was as effective as oiled brakes - a result of their own time as government and it's democratically judged efficacy.

But I'm apolitical. I'm more interested in issues. And in the issues department, the best equivalent of most of the debate was, "my mummy can beat up your mummy". It was a true embarassment to watch. But the grandstanding was in full force, I suppose, with live cameras on the scene and a captive audience of those who want to know what's going on in Trinidad and Tobago.

Let me get to the issues.

The media has been flooded with politics regarded flooding. The new Prime Minister has been flying around in a helicopter and taking tours of the flooded areas - inflicting her whims on the local elected representatives as she sees fit to the chagrin of just about anyone who wants to be chagrined. The rains come, Acts of God as any Insurance company would have in their legal documents, but I'll note that there doesn't seem to be a large proportion of people going to their respective places of worship and discussing rain with their Creator.

I first asked this question in the run-up to the recent General Elections and got a few responses.  The general conclusion then was that voters only have the power to hold their representatives truly accountable when they stain their fingers in a polling station (or to a lesser extent in internal party elections, e.g. UNC, or leaving to form your own party, like COP).  This power becomes diminished when we revert to traditional voting patterns of supporting the status quo despite their poor performance.

My perspective shifted when I realized I was a year older than the appointed Attorney General. There's a line from John Mayer's 'Waiting On The World To Change'  that sprang to mind:

...One day our generation Is gonna rule the population ...

I started picking through the manifestos - both here and here. And when I started, I fully intended to complete a good fact check on each manifesto. To some degree, I have - and honestly, after a few days of staring at the 'contents' of each manifesto... I'm somewhat disgusted. So I stopped.

This general election has seen the most social media usage in the history of Trinidad and Tobago. On Facebook, I've been getting more friend requests from politicians than pretty women - a horrible thought in my book with aged politicians wanting to be my friend for political expediency. Ahh, the trials and tribulations of being on Facebook...

Finally, with the People's Partnership Manifesto out, we can stand both manifestos side by side.

The People's Partnership Manifesto is available here (3 megabytes)- it was just released today.

The People's National Movement Manifesto is available here (20 megabytes). It was released earlier this week.

According to members of the new political coalition in T&T, Mr Calder Hart is expected to return to the country on Monday 3rd May 2010 to be formally charged with perjury.  The COP's Vernon de Lima is reported to have said:

Funny how life unfolds.  Two weeks after writing how one should judge exiting the political stage, there are events causing me to ponder on political entries.

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?