HAPPY EASTER

 Today (easter Sunday) marks the most important festival (for want of a better word) in the Christian calendar. Indeed, you cannot be a Christian if you don't believe that Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead three days later.

Because I have always had a curious mind and asked three uncomfortable questions, I used to ask; (1) how come Easter always moves every year? (2) Why do we call it Easter? Where did this name come from? (3) Why is there always a full moon in the week just before the Easter weekend?

Well, I found answers to these questions by going back in history. It seems that the Emperor Constantine was having a lot of trouble with the Christians who by 325AD comprised something like 30 percent of the Roman Empire.

 So he called all the Christian Bishops in the Empire to the town of Nicea (which is today somewhere in Turkey). This conference is known in history as the Council of Nicea. At this conference Constantine sought to align  Christian events and beliefs (such as the birth and death of Christ) with pagan beliefs, traditions and holidays.. For example  the Council agreed to move the date for the birth of Christ to December 25th which originally marked a pagan festival celebrating the date on which the sun starts to move North after hitting the Southernmost Tropic on December 21st.

But why do we call it 'Easter' and why does it move every year? Again, we have the pagans to thank for this. It seems that on the Friday in the week which the third full moon of the year was always celebrated by the pagans to commemorate the goddess of Spring, Oestre,  (It is from her name that we get the name 'Easter'). In any case, Spring has always symbolized rebirth and reproduction (represented by eggs and rabbit). Constantine argued that it didn't matter when exactly the relevant dates were (birth and death). What was important was the fact of the actual celebration, so he got his way after a lot of argument and  he converted to Christianity. Remember that in those days everybody had to have the same religion as the Emperor. So in one fell swoop Europe (the Roman Empire) became Christian.

And so, it seems that the pagan festivals have lived on although today they represent very different things.

THE COMING ELECTION

 Well, at the time of writing this post there are less than two weeks before the general election. The UNC continues to pull large crowds - bigger than the PNM's. If crowds or crowd size are an indication of poll strength then (unsurprisingly) the UNC will win hands down. But while there are  a lot of people who are completely fed up with the PNM those people are not being persuaded to vote for the UNC - at least not yet! And this election will be based on the total number of seats won and not votes cast.

Part of the reluctance to vote for the UNC can be attributed to race. But this is only a small part of the whole picture - the biggest part can be laid squarely at the feet of the UNC leader. Many rabid UNC supporters will take umbrage at what is being said here. And it is true that a week is a long time in politics - a lot can change. But present performance on both sides of the political divide suggest (a) that there will be a low poll; (b) that the crowd size in the UNC meetings are from UNC supporters who are from 'safe' seats; and (c) that in a low poll in crucial 'swing' seats the PNM will win - even though the UNC will probably win the popular vote in the country.

My guess is that the PNM has probably given up at least one seat in Tobago, but that their polls are showing them with a small majority of the 39 seats in Trinidad. Win, lose or draw expect Tobago to play a large part in the next Government. Certainly, if the two Tobago seats are lost by the PNM, Tobago's importance will only increase as far as governance is concerned.

But what is noticeably missing, especially from the PNM, is what are they going to do to make our lives better. Unfortunately, while the UNC is making promises, nobody knows how they are going to pay for them - and that is a problem. The political and economic policies from both sides are essentially the same except that both sides are saying that " we (whoever 'we' are) can do it better!

And the truth is that by all that is normal the UNC should win  a whopping majority. But things are not ever normal, are they?

ELECTION MESSAGING

 Clearly, what wins elections is better messaging and better candidates - especially at the top of the ticket. So the questions are, or ought to be, who has the better message? Who has the better candidates? Well we'll find out soon enough what the electorate thinks. Both political Parties seem to be suffering from a dearth of viable candidates and both seem to be relying more on racial voting than on anything else.

Newspapers, television and radio are crammed with opinions from both sides as to who -  PNM or UNC - has the better candidates and who can tackle the big problems of a red ink budget not to mention crime. Frankly, it is a big "if" as to whether or not either of the big Parties, based on their present rhetoric, really have  a clue as to how they will go about fixing things. There has been a lot of talk about what is wrong and a lot of vague proposals as to how to fix what ails us, but nobody has made firm proposals and nobody has said what he/she will do if these proposals don't work. But it is laughable to describe them (the proposals) as rationalizing what is wrong with the country.

I've said it once and I'll say it again: there is only one reason for politics -only one reason for Government - and that is to make life better for the people! Full stop! There is no other reason. Perhaps if there were two Prime Ministerial candidates who were more attractive  the proposed solutions might give us some hope. But as things stand at the moment  the biggest (and mainly unspoken) challenge is race - and we are simply ignoring it and pretending that it doesn't exist. But the message is clear: if you are Black/African vote PNM. If you are Indian vote UNC. And to hell with anything else.

In the meantime (and seriously), whose proposals do YOU think will make YOUR life better within the next five years? And what will you do about it if things do not get better for YOU?