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?
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