The Manicou Report

Three Things

There are three things that worried me this week when it comes to the crime situation in Trinidad and Tobago. If you are anything like me it’s very difficult to be bothered by the incidents covered in the news anymore. Call it being desensitized if you will, but grizzly murders don’t shock me anymore. Surprisingly, it wasn’t even Tecia Henry’s murder that bothered me so much, heinous as it was.

The first thing was the statement made by Patrick Manning at the PNM convention following Tecia Henry’s murder saying of the murder, “I know all of you all know the facts. Ent you know? Don’t take it at face value, that is all I would say”. In the same story Manning expresses his sympathy for President George Maxwell Richards as he noted the difficulty President Richards is experiencing in appointing a new Integrity Commission, yet not one ounce of that sympathy finds its way towards the family of Tecia Henry. A letter to the editor of the Trinidad Express written by a Dr. Steve Smith says it best.:

After witnessing the Prime Minister’s “performance” specifically with respect to the death of Tecia Henry at the hands of some two-legged monster, I find myself not only uncontrollably outraged but truly afflicted by the frustration and helplessness of knowing that this mob ruler cannot be immediately and summarily fired for such monstrous and selfish irresponsibility!

Selfish because in unjustly slandering Tecia’s mother and raising doubts about her credibility, he has simultaneously dealt a mortal blow to our collective social conscience. And we continue to wonder how we have become so heartless and callous a people!

In true PNM style, he throws out a piece of mauvais commérage and mob talk, clearly intended to compromise the reputation of the child’s parents and in so doing, attempts not only to vindicate the child’s abominable murder, but to simultaneously and with an ostentation that truly rivals the sickening display by Pontius Pilate, to wash the blood off his own hands and those of his incompetent and equally culpable Cabinet.

Rather than offer sympathy, the malignant head of this callous organisation in one fell swoop has become judge, jury and executioner!

He has abused his authority and the information asymmetry that his job as Chairman of the National Security Council affords him, and for the sake of his lust for power, has sacrificed the demands of natural justice.

Dr Steve Smith

via e-mail

Nuff said.

The second thing that got to me was Martin Joseph’s disclosure that the evidence rooms of the Trinidad and Tobago police service have become a free-for-all for corrupt members of the TTPS. If they replaced the evidence room door with a revolving door I don’t think they could make the perversion of justice any more efficient. Just look at the grocery list:

• 22 foil packets possibly containing cocaine.
• One 9mm pistol and magazine
• Six Sig Sauer firearms, ammunition
• A 16-gauge shotgun
• An air rifle
• Six bread pans
• One gold Almera vehicle

Something makes me think that this list of missing items is only what they have found to be missing so far. The real list could be much longer. Not only will suspects go free because of missing evidence, but all of these seized items will find their way back on the nations streets.

The final thing that has bothered me, were the details surrounding the murder of Camille Daniel yesterday. For bandits to shoot a woman on the compound of the West End Police Station without any fear or apprehension tells me something. There are people in our country who wouldn’t litter on a lonely street in the middle of the night just because it is the wrong thing to do. And then there are people who would take a gun (sans silencer) and shoot a woman in the back – all on the compound of a police station of all places, and will go home and sleep the sleep of the just.

So when you mix callous politicians, corrupt police and hardened criminals, what do you get? And this is the reason why I’m worried. It seems as if we are in some deep trouble here. I think we’d better settle down and get comfortable because this has “long haul” written all over it. The way things are going now, things will get a lot worse before they get better.

Posted in Corruption, Crime, PNM, Politics | 13 Comments »

Jerry Narace

One man says we are living under a dictatorship. The other asks, “What are you talking about? This isn’t dictatorship. Pinochet, now that was a dictator.”

Sometimes it’s so easy to identify with the first guy.

I found this story reading one of my new favourite blogs Media Watch. I never watched more than a few seconds of any of Sasha Mohammed’s pieces on the health system in Trinidad and Tobago this week. So I can’t comment on the veracity of Ms. Mohammed’s information or criticisms of its supposed anti-government slant. However I will admit that her work makes me a little uneasy sometimes. Considering I am no fan of the Government that’s saying a lot.

So the story is that TV6’s Sasha Mohammed does this week-long in depth piece about the health sector from which I gather that the government didn’t look too good. Subsequently the Minister of Health, Jerry Narace, hot under the collar for what he calls “inaccuracies”, “unfair statements” and the “lack of balance”, appears on the TV6 set to be “interviewed” by Sasha Mohammed (in a minute you’ll see why I used quotation marks). However instead of Jerry Narace, Heinrich Himmler shows up at the TV6 newsroom, not to be interviewed, but to inform the nation of the evils of CCN.

***NOTE: Apparently TV6 complained to YouTube about the copyright infringement and the video was removed. Geez, these people know nothing about publicity.***

I would have thought that Minister Narace would have wanted to come in and discuss with Sasha Mohammed the source of her facts and pit his against hers. If I were Minster of Health, I would want to show the nation how she was wrong – embarrass her if I could. Why not let the truth come out? Instead, Himmler comes in, reads off a bunch of stats, and refuses any attempt by Ms. Mohammed to interview him – which is probably the way he wanted it. After all, he is the Minister of Health and his word should count for more than that of a lowly reporter. Once he speaks, the citizenry will shed whatever foolish beliefs they held after viewing Ms. Mohammed’s piece, right?

In essence all Mr. Narace did was to bury the truth in an unmarked grave. How is anyone supposed to find out what the truth is? She said her piece, he said his, but what’s the truth? It occurred to me that Mr. Narace’s appearance on TV6 was not to comfort worried citizens, but to bludgeon them with his stats. As bad as this may sound, this fits in perfectly with my own personal view of Mr. Narace i.e. I’m not convinced he’s in government because of a burning desire to serve the people. I’m also not sure he’s the kind of person that stays up at night worrying about the poor and disadvantaged.

Sasha Mohammed also deserves some criticism for that debacle of an interview. Jerry Narace just can’t walk onto the TV6 set and silence her with his finger. This isn’t a post-cabinet news conference. This was Sasha’s turf and she should have been more forceful in making the Minister know that. Kudos to her for having the testicular fortitude to end the interview, but by that time the damage was done and she had already shown herself to be a tad bit weak. Of course I am just the armchair analyst.

Posted in Infrastructure, Media, PNM, Politics | 5 Comments »

Balisiers on a Plane

I wasn’t quite sure what to think when I saw this story on the news last night. Yes the balisier is a flower – a pretty flower at that – and it makes up part of the flora of Trinidad and Tobago. However, the balisier is also the political symbol of the ruling PNM, which makes the situation a little dicey when someone decides to use the flower outside of the political arena. So when Caribbean Airlines, a national airline, employs the use of a balisier on some of the planes, I have to wonder who’s doing the thinking over there.

The plus (or minus, depending on how you look at it) is that both the balisier used by the PNM and the balisier used in this painting are true representations of what the flower looks like and not some over-the-top, Pablo Picassoesque artists’s interpretation of it. So you can say either that (1) the artist employed by Caribbean Airlines did not necessarily use the PNM’s symbol or (2) it’s the same balisier and that now that it’s widely accepted as a political symbol, it can’t be used anywhere else ESPECIALLY not on Government property.

If they had used the UNC’s rising sun symbol as opposed to a sunrise, now that would have been trouble. Clearly one is an artist’s interpretation of the other and it would be sheer madness to use the former instead of the latter.

Me? I’m wondering why the folks over at Caribbean Airlines would so willingly court the ire of a very divided society when it was oh so avoidable. They were bound to know that this was going to be a contentious issue. Why not use the Chaconia, our national flower, instead? The whole thing is neither here nor there with me, but I think that either someone wasn’t thinking at all or that they were thinking way too much. And the conspiracy theorist in this Manicou leans towards the latter. But say wha.

Poor flower. It never signed up for up for this bacchanal. It was happy just growing up in the forest being a flower. I guess that’s the price it pays for being pretty. No one’s clamouring to place a banana flower on plane or party – lucky it.

Posted in PNM, Politics | 20 Comments »

Stop!

There are some things that about Trinbago that disturb me a great deal. Yes crime is a big issue, so are food prices, homelessness etc, but what really worries me a lot is our rhetoric.

Last week while I was browsing Facebook profiles, I came across this group: called F*** the PNM.

Just because a man is a member of a political party or votes a certain way that does not make him evil. Yes many people are misguided, many let race decide how they vote, but to call everyone who voted for the PNM racial and dotish is unproductive.

Man, is stick we stick in this rut? I could just be since I don’t talk like that and I try to be a little more diplomatic than that, that I was offended as I was. But upon reading this, I was dismayed. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m about ready for people to start voting their consciences and stop voting party – in fact I’m in a hurry for that to happen. So when I read thing like that it feels as though we’re not really making any progress.

And if you see the people in this 356 member group – young smart-looking people. Some even university educated.

Sometimes I feel T&T will be a much better place if we could just tone down the political rhetoric a little. If we could just watch what we say and learn to express ourselves more constructively, we’d be in a much better place than we are now. Yes I understand that people are angry and that people need to vent some steam. But at some point they will have to realize that they are making things progressively worse.

At the end of it all what is the goal here? If the makers of the group are trying to propagate the same type of tribalism by setting people even firmer in their ways than they are now,then they are on the right track. But if they want to get people to think for themselves and change voting patterns, then an “F*** the PNM” group on Facebook couldn’t possible be the way to do it. You can’t woo people over to your side by insulting them – a point lost on some politicians.

It’s a sad thing when people use great vehicles such as social networking sites to spread this kind of rhetoric. And I have to wonder how much longer thing will carry on in this manner before we get the point, which is that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If we don’t get the point, pretty soon we will become a country of angry, belligerent people capable only of hurling the basest of insults towards each other and incapable of any kind of civility or fraternity.

In the end it boils down to what we as a people want and what we are going to do to get it. It’s entirely within the rights of the group’s founders to say what they want, but nasty rhetoric probably won’t get them (or us) anywhere. People who are genuinely interested in seeing Trinidad prosper, I feel, would choose their words more carefully than that.

Posted in Politics | 15 Comments »

Captain, Your Ship is Sinking

Captain Gary Griffith’s boat has sprung a leak. Actually, his letter leaked. Captain Gary Griffith left me speechless a couple days ago. A lot of you might know that COP member Captain Gary Griffith’s name has been in the news a lot recently, but what happened two days ago may shock you.

Just to update you on the story so far. Gary Griffith, in a letter leaked to the press, criticized COP Political Leader Winston Dookeran for his leadership style. Then my boy Gary Griffith instead of choosing not to comment on the letter, takes a sledge hammer to the leak and decides, “Oh yeah, I’ll grant the Express an interview“. What a leak! Said Mr. Griffith:

Winston Dookeran has become a law unto himself.

“Our political leader was selected rather than elected and we need to have some electoral process to have the full support of the 148,000. I don’t think we can get an extra vote with Winston Dookeran as the political leader.”

Dookeran, while not responding specifically to Gary Griffith’s comments, said,

“…We are proceeding very well and there are lots of people who are working and working at all levels, from the bottom level to the top level of the COP all over the country.

“We are working to keep that alive and I am doing my part to ensure that happens,”

To which Gary Griffith graciously replied,

“For him to say that we are moving forward and everything is working well, that is a figment of his imagination.”

It’s quite a coincidence that the letter leaked just as Gary Griffith is about to team up with Jack Warner to create a anti-crime plan for Chaguanas West. Could this be the same Gary Griffith who not too long ago was touting the greatness of Winston Dookeran?

With that being as bad as it Captain Gary Griffith made it infinitely worse when he called Anil Chris and Sprang on the Powerdive as the topic was being discussed so as to to lambaste Anil Roberts for discussing the topic on air. The man was in full bacchanal mode:

“Yuh loudmouth, hypocrite. I like how yuh doing the same thing yuh criticize me for. You is the reason why we loss the election. Yuh want to hang up on me? Go ahead, yuh duck and run just like yuh leader!”

Gasp! First of all it wasn’t Anil Roberts who was parading before the media. It was Gary Griffith. Now that Gary Griffith’s letter, and Gary Griffith himself is in the public spotlight, the story is legitimate – something which Gary Griffith seems unable to understand.

Griffith’s accusations are even more interesting considering the report that before last Sunday (where he apologised for the leak and his subsequent comments), he hadn’t been to a COP executive meeting since November 5th or thereabouts. Yet even more interesting was what Gary Griffith said during his apology, “The growing pains which were presently being experienced by the party was a natural aspect in the life of a political party. The party would deal with these growing pains in a professional manner“. Interesting.

The COP issued a press release stating that Mr. Griffith does not speak on behalf of the Congress of the People and that all his appearances in the media haven’t been sanctioned by the party. It’s interesting therefore that this is the very same loose cannon who has accused Mr. Dookeran of becoming a party onto himself. Awkward.

I am sure the COP will weather this as well as the (perhaps) the imminent departure of Mr. Griffith.

Posted in COP, Politics | 20 Comments »

It’s Finally Over

Thank God for we PNM yes gyul. Dem Indian and dem talking too much schupidness. – My aunt to my mother.

From her statement some of you might guess that my aunt is some kind of under-educated, swearing, rum-drinking bacchanalist. She is none of these things. My aunt is an educated woman who left her Canadian university one dissertation short of a PhD. She is also a devoutly religious woman.

My point in highlighting this is not to condemn my aunt (although I do condemn her statements), I want to ask you where are we going? When I sit back and look at it all, it’s disheartening. My aunt is by no means an isolated case either in my extended family or the whole of Trinidad and Tobago for that matter. I have an uncle even more educated than his sister there who is guilty of saying things that are just as negative. And I am sure that many of you have been put off by things your near and dear family members have said – things you might not have expected from them. I did not expect this from her after all. A lot of us have come to expect statements like this from wider society, but it’s always more disheartening to hear this coming from our own.

Part of me thinks that we are doomed as a society if we continue to vote on race and religion the way we did on November 5th. I scoff at the people who tell me that the majority of people voted on issues. The way I see it is that the majority people to this day still vote for a party based on skin colour and hair texture.

That having been said, I am proud to have made up that 148,000 that voted for the COP. I would not have voted had it not been for the them and I feel the same is true for many others. Despite what Mr. Panday says, the COP did no “wrong” to the country. We who voted for them did not believe in either the UNC or the PNM. I don’t subscribe to the thought that we should have voted for the UNC-A in order to not “split the vote”. I don’t understand the UNC-A’s notion that if you’ve voted for the UNC in the past, votes are by default theirs and you shouldn’t ever vote for anyone else. Votes are earned on a voter by voter basis and in the minds of COP voters, the UNC-A did not earn their votes. We did what we did, not because it was popular, but because it was right. I would do it all over again if I had to because sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in regardless of the outcome if only to sleep well at night.

So what we go do people?

P.S. – Contrary to what my aunt thinks, my mother voted COP as did the rest of my immediate family.

Posted in COP, PNM, Politics, UNC | 26 Comments »

I Voted

Did you?

Posted in PNM, Politics | 25 Comments »

On the 11th Day of Elections

On the 11th Day of Elections My Emperor gave to me:

11 Sprangers Spranging
10 Percent Inflation
9 Tall buildings building
8 Killers killing
7 Weekly floods
6 Cdap drugs
5 Brushcutters
4 Breakfastses
3 Smelters Smelting
2 Blimp what need fixing
And a Cepep wuk down in Caroni.

Posted in PNM, Politics | 2 Comments »

5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th Days of Elections

Yes, this is a ratch, but I prefer to call it “fast-tracking”.

On the 9th Day of Elections My Emperor gave to me:

9 Tall buildings building
8 Killers killing
7 Weekly floods
6 Cdap drugs
5 Brushcutters
4 Breakfastses
3 Smelters Smelting
2 Blimp what need fixing
And a Cepep wuk down in Caroni.

Posted in PNM, Politics | No Comments »

The Date Draweth Nigh

Roadside Plea

Oh gosh allyuh, no ah hear. No Toronto Trini, ah not busy on any “campain” trail (as Afro Chic put it). (1) I’m a little busy (2) I fed up of this elections (3) I fed up of politicians (3) My internet has been acting up. So in all I was a little busy and I wasn’t trying that hard to make time to blog.

As I said I’m tired of all the politics and I can’t wait for this election to be over. I also tired of the constant noise I have to undergo on what seems to be an hourly basis (that Afro Chic also mentioned). I’m tired of dodgy, evasive politicians and disingenuous talk show hosts. And Dr. Amery Brown’s grin and ugly moustache to that list – “I’m so overwhelmed by the response I’ve received from the people of Diego Martin Central. Everyone has been so warm towards me. I am so happy that Ken Valley has fully embraced my candidacy.” Oh give me a chance Dr. Brown, you are fighting a safe seat.

In other election news, guess what came in the mail for me 2 days ago?

The Manicou’s Poll Card

Sorry I can’t bring you photos from inside the booth – phones are illegal on the premises.

Who knows what’s going to happen on Monday? I’m trying not to be too concerned with what the polls say. I know what I have to do, and I plan on doing it. Whatever happens, happens. If the Congress of the People win, then great, if they lose, then at least I did what I thought was right.

Posted in Politics | 9 Comments »