THAT MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR MISTAKE!!

 Have you any idea of how much a billion dollars is? Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that in your lifetime you will ever come near making that amount of money. Most people find this sum hard to even  conceptualize. After all, it is not an amount that they can ever even dream about making.

So let me help you: if I gave you one billion dollars on the day that they crucified Jesus Christ, and you lived forever and didn't get any interest on that sum and you spent one thousand dollars a day - every day; today you would have something like 110 years to go BEFORE you ran out of money! Unbelievable, eh? Check it out yourself.

My point here is that we see that there is a multi billion dollar mistake in the country's accounts as presented by the auditor general. Most people will have seen this news and shrugged their shoulders and asked, "so what?" Those who are rabid supporters of the Government will say in effect that nothing has been proven and in any case it is just an accounting error that anybody could make. Those who are rabid supporters of the Opposition will say that this is highly believable and is just another example of 'thievery' in the ruling PNM. Just about everybody will quietly say that they don't think that anything will come of it and that nobody will ever have to give an account that will be acceptable to all. In other words, whatever is reported, nothing will happen.

And yet, there is a mistake reported on the country's books that comes to several billion dollars! Is anybody concerned? Does anybody really care?

WHAT ABOUT US?

 I had been hoping against hope that I would have been proven wrong in my last post and that the Prime Minister, when he came home, would have given us at the very least, a full account of his trip, how much it cost and why he took with him whoever he took (apart from his wife), and what benefit to the country did they bring to the table, and so on.  Instead his press conference yesterday was just the usual 'blah-blah-blah' in which no useful information was given and we learned nothing. Whatever happened to the old maxim: "if you have nothing to say, don't say it!"?

I keep trying to make the point: there is only one reason for politics - one reason for Government; to make life better for the people! Full stop! There is NO other reason.  I was also taught that if you can't make your point in one sentence then you can't make it at all. So? in one sentence, how did Dr. Rowley's last trip benefit T&T? How did it make your life better? Did it bring the cost of living down? What exactly did it achieve? Can anyone answer this question in one sentence?

Isn't it about time that we start to hold our so-called leaders to account? That they are all living well is understood. But what about the rest of us?

DEALING WITH INCOMPETENCE

 It is almost an unwritten rule: when things are going bad for the country, then Prime ministers like to travel - especially on official visits. After all, there is no daily barrage of bad news, you are unreachable, and any media coverage of you is almost always favourable, You are often treated like a hero and as the "greatest thing since sliced bread". You have very few problems to deal with other than which school are you going to open today, or what colour tie will you wear tonight at the cocktail party in your honour. The problems at home are far away and your trip is often most relaxing and enjoyable. There will be no awkward questions at any press conference and your hosts will be anxious to please you.

But all good things must come to an end and sooner or later you will have to go home and face your own electorate. Your first line of defence will be to keep quiet; your second line of defence if keeping quiet doesn't work, will be to blame the Opposition for the country's problems - whatever they might be. Another line of defence (but not the main one) will be to report on how "successful" your trip was and how much the country will benefit from your travels.

T&T's Prime Minister is reportedly off on yet another foreign trip - this time to Ghana. Why Ghana? Well, the obvious answer in one word is race. Oh! It will not be presented as plainly or as bluntly as That! No! Dr. Rowley will return with a lot of hot air and empty promises about how Africa is a huge untapped market and one which we have ignored for too long. There will be promises of new business and more jobs - all of which will be brought to us by Santa Claus on his sleigh. And by the time that those promises do not materialize he will have beautifully segued onto some other issue and we will all have forgotten not only the empty promises but not even how much of our money that his little jaunt has cost us.

Of course, this will continue to happen time and again until we learn the obviously difficult lesson that the present load of politicians (on both sides) are simply in that business for themselves and not for us. After we learn this lesson, the next question will be what are we going to do about it? 

FIX THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM - CATCH THE CROOKS

 Following on this last weekend's shootout and murders (where 12 people were wounded and 4 killed) unsurprisingly there have been renewed calls for harsher penalties. However amidst all of the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth nobody has hit on the simple fact that the criminals and murderers are simply not being caught.

I remember reading somewhere a few years ago that for every 100 murders the conviction rate was somewhere in the vicinity of 7 percent and that most of those convictions related to what can loosely be called 'domestic disputes'. The arrest rate for what might  loosely be called 'gang related' murders and crimes were somewhere around 3 percent and the conviction rate for these types of crime was less than 1 percent!

My guess is that the arrest rate percentages are even lower now, and as for the conviction rate!  Well that is just about non-existent! 

So? Think like a criminal: if you had a less than 3 percent chance of getting caught would you hesitate to commit the crime? My bet is that you wouldn't give it a second thought. And if by some chance you were actually arrested and charged, your chances of being actually convicted are so close to zero that no threat of any penalties will deter you!

Think about it! We don't really need more stringent, "hang-em high" laws; what we need is for the police to actually do their job and catch the crooks. Then we need for the justice system to work quickly so that between an arrest and a verdict from a trial, less than one year has passed instead of the very long wait - sometimes/often more than10 years - that pertains now. 

Until we fix this we are simply whistling in the wind! Politicians can give us as much "basket" as they want - and we can all cheer lustily while they hold expensive meetings in first class hotels (which we pay for, by the way) that come up with all kinds of fancy rhetoric that make them sound as if they know what they are doing. But nothing that ANY politician has said has ever provided ANY solution as to how they propose to catch the crooks. And until the crooks start getting caught our crime situation will just get worse. Watch!

CAN THE UNC WIN BY ITSELF UNDER KAMLA?

 A friend of mine has written to me saying that Mrs. Persad Bissessar and her supporters are concentrating on the upcoming internal UNC elections and are pushing the line that those who oppose her are simply trying to divide the party. Left unspoken is that a divided party cannot defeat the PNM in the general elections due next year.

While that last sentence is obviously true, it really does beg the question as to who is dividing the UNC?  You see, by all that is normal the UNC should be way ahead in the polls right now of the Rowley led PNM.  The only people who are better off than they were some 9 years ago when Rowley et al came to power, are the financiers of the PNM and a handful of party insiders. Everybody else has seen his/her standard of living fall and become more expensive. There have been seemingly countless errors of judgement that have cost the country dearly. And yet, the UNC is running 'neck and neck' with the PNM! Something is obviously wrong somewhere.

And yet, Mrs. Persad Bissessar and her supporters cling to their diminished power and influence, proving the old adage about it being "better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven" It is as if the theme of the UNC in the next elections will be 'they have screwed up but we can do better'.  Left out of that equation is exactly how they will do better. No real policies have been defined and Kamla's crew is blatantly incompetent (except for one or two able people like Roodal Moonilal). Her leader of Opposition business in the Parliament, for example,  screws up time and again, but is very adept at getting Mrs. Persad Bissessar to blame others for his mistakes.

Look, the ONLY reason for politics - the ONLY reason for Government - is to make life better for the people! Full stop! Punto finale! There is no other reason! Mrs. Persad Bissessar seems to be operating on the premise that the only reason for politics and Government is her personal well being.  She has made countless statements that she is prepared to lead again, but she has failed to lay out a clear path to victory for the UNC or how she will make your life better. She has also failed to excite the wider electorate that she will need if she wants to win. A dispassionate observer can be forgiven in concluding that she is just interested in just herself and not the wider community that she wishes to represent.

So my answer to the question asked at the beginning of this post is that if an election were to be called tomorrow, UNC will lose if it does not make an alliance with the smaller parties - and even then it will be a toss up. They look very much at the moment that they will lose.

Having said that, it should be noted that there are competent potential leaders waiting in the wings (unless, of course, the UNC leader "kills" them first - which seems to be happening).