Some years ago in conversation with a colleague I had referred to City Council as an “archaic and useless body” that exists to furnish us with laughs, and one that also serves as a useful model of how an important democratic institution could disintegrate in the absence of crucial reforms, years of political wrangling and numerous internal trivialities.
The political landscape of this country has for some time now been a theatre for acerbic insults and narrow-mindedness.
The declining standards of our performances in sports was put into sharp focus when the team we prepared for the London 2012 Olympics returned following a poor showing – the reality was apparently so upsetting to the Director of Sport that he severely criticised the group calling their showing “miserable.”
Education Minister Priya Manickchand, facing a barrage of criticism for the CN Sharma remark she made in Parliament last week, questioned when it is a convenient time to expose rape and paedophilia.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar recently sacked her Minister of the People and Social Development Dr Glenn Ramdharsingh for his inappropriate behaviour towards an attendant on a Caribbean Airlines flight.
Although at 13 he was indicted for murders committed during massacres at Lusignan and Bartica, Dwane Williams was just a blip on the public’s radar until the recent High Court trial where he went from being a co-accused to a state witness.
The words “child abuse,” with their unsettling overtones of physical, sexual or emotional maltreatment of a child, are triggers for rage.
The spectre of extra-judicial killings continues to cast a wide shadow over a significant number of recent police shootings, which have left several young men—mostly from deprived communities— dead.
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