By Stephen Kangal
January 21, 2008
All the three major but flippant proposals announced by PM Manning at the inaugural Regency Hyatt Chamber of Commerce $800 luncheon lacked thought, vision, investigative evaluation and an appreciation of the fundamentals of problem-solving.
These include his experimental ABC “play whe” lottery plans for crime fighting, his hanging proposal debacle and the duplication of monitoring and evaluation teams in each Ministry. Someone has to tell PM Manning, even if he does not listen, that he has to consult to avoid verbal insults to the native intelligence of Trinbagonians.
Continue reading The Monitoring and Evaluation Façade
In light of the escalating crime rate in Trinidad and Tobago, and the perceived impotence of the Police Service to arrest the situation, I want to once again bring up the idea of decentralization of the major law-enforcement bodies. 
Now that Prime Minister Patrick Manning has declared his latest plan to curb crime-hang ’em high-I must advise him of a sinister measure he can add for special effect. The PM knows I am among those who oppose capital punishment, although, shamefully, I must admit to having looked in the other direction as Dole Chadee and his gang were strung up under hangman Ramesh Maharaj’s watch. Now I urge the PM to torture the SoBs before putting the noose around their necks.
A week ago Louis Lee Sing broke two of the most sacred of PNM’s commandments: thou shall not speak evil of the political leader in public; and thou shall not speak evil of the party in public. It’s alright to speak your truth about the political leader and the party behind closed doors; it’s quite another matter to air negative views in public.
As Calypsonians put the final touches on their compositions for C2K8, it is apropos to relegate to the ash heap of TnT’s political history, the notion that has been bandied about by some Calypsonians that as Prime Minister of TnT, George Chambers was “duncy.” The fact of the matter is that such a notion is not rooted in historical/factual reality but rather in mythology and facetious fiction.
I really loved the well-written article by former Secretary of State Madeleine (shouldn’t that be Meddlin?) Albright on the Trinidad Express on Friday 11th January. Such hubris, such hypocrisy compressed into twelve paragraphs. It was exactly the sort of historically decontextualised drivel I have come to expect from North Atlantic political figures (although, given what passes for local journalism and radio talk, it has spread here as well).
It must be a source of enormous embarrassment to us in T&T that the Manning Administration should spend our taxpayers money to jointly sponsor in collaboration with the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf a seminar. It will outline the procedures for the delimitation of the maritime boundaries of the extended continental shelf (Newsday 14 Jan., p. 15) between national and international jurisdiction located beyond 200 nautical miles (limits of the Exclusive Economic Zone). This is a clear case of stupid T&T paying for the laying of tracks for smart Bajan agoutis to run on.
If anybody can convince me that a state of emergency would yield benefits in the fight against crime, I’d be willing to listen and act. So said Prime Minister Patrick Manning last week as he and others, the opposition UNC included, insisted that emergency powers were not required to deal with this unholy mess. I respond to the PM this way: show me that you can lower the level of crime using Minister Martin Joseph’s many “plans”, and I’ll concede that we do not need an emergency.
Though some may beg to differ, there is ample evidence to conclude that human beings are fundamentally evil. For any number of reasons, we almost instinctively oppress each other in the most brutal fashion. History is replete with genocide, slavery, ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, gender discrimination, economic and political oppression and the list goes on. Far from being exhausted, this does not even begin to scratch the surface of human savagery. According to Columbus’ own account, he received an enthusiastic welcome by native people who came bearing gifts. In response, he unleashed a reign of terror including rape, murder, pillage and enslavement.