WHITHER GOETH THE COUNTRY?

Just about everybody in the country is crying these days about the dire straits in which Trinidad  Tobago finds itself. Depending on whom you talk to the fault lies with the "other side", meaning the side to which that person does not belong or identify with. The complainers wax warm when it comes to discussing the leadership shortcomings of the other side. But the truth is that personal leadership shortcomings are not the main problem ... although, admittedly they have contributed to the problem. There has been a fundamental shift in the politics of the country in which both of the major parties have become more homogenous and the mix of actual concerns has turned more and more to issues of identity ...or to put it bluntly: Race!


PNM voters are overwhelmingly Black, Christian and generally come from the poorer sections of the society.


UNC voters are overwhelmingly Hindu and Indian with a large section of the Moslem and Christian Indians supporting that Party.


Very generally speaking, the UNC supporters are financially better off than their PNM counterparts and tend to rely less on Government jobs and largesse. The children of UNC supporters generally tend to do better in school than those of the PNM.


UNC funding tends to come from wealthy Indians (mostly Hindus) while the PNM tends to get most of its money from the Syrian community and a few wealthy businessmen who happily play both sides in the not unreasonable expectation that they will benefit from lucrative Government contracts when either side wins the next election.


The mainstream media is dominated by the African elements in the society as well (as in the case of the Guardian) by the Syrians. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media is overwhelmingly biased in favour of the PNM although they all pretend that they are not. (As I have said before, it is their constitutional right to be biased. It is dishonest for them to pretend that they are not when they are.)


Social media choices reflect and reinforce these identity lines. It is fairly easy to guess at the ethnicity of an anonymous writer/contributor on social media just from reading his/her comments on any particular issue.


The attitude on both sides of the political divide is not just that the other side is misguided, but that the other side is evil. In these circumstances, any form of compromise  becomes impossible and any chance of the country moving forward is as great as a snowball will have of surviving in Hell.


Both Parties are hurling themselves and the country off of a cliff and resist genuinely reaching out to the other side.  Probably, the biggest problem is the complete lack of trust that exists on both sides in the bona fides of the other side. Excuses and/or deflections are the order of the day ... on both sides! It's always "their" fault and "we" are always not guilty. "We" have never done any wrong and will never do any wrong! To which statement an unbiased and reasonable observer on the ferry to Tobago will raise his eyebrows in slight surprise and say "really"?