Fwd: TT, a Failing State, accelerating decline, under Kamla and Patrick

[CCDSJ_TT]

From the best T&T POLITICAL Facebook page:

 

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Politically Speaking 

POLITICALLY SPEAKING

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• Phillip Edward Alexander

  Failing Forward....
  
  No country becomes a 'failed State' overnight, it creeps up in degrees. Social norms have to be discarded, people need to be dehumanized and authority has to be challenged and vanquished. Based on current trends Trinidad & Tobago is going to be an excellent case study one day and I wanted to do my part in trying to document the decline. For a state to fail people need to lose complete respect for each other, for every system of governance, for life and death, but most importantly, for themselves. When life becomes meaningless and the 'other' is seen only in terms of pathways to increase or obstacles to progress there is nowhere left to go but down.
  
  The news this week is fraught with glaring examples of the accelerating decline on so many social levels it is almost jarring, yet still we plummet on, oblivious to where we are or where we're headed. The top story this week was the tragedy in Trou Macacaque Laventille, where one brother decided to settle scores with his family in a dispute over a government house they were each trying to inherit individually, so he barred the exit and set the apartment on fire, killing at least five persons, among them two little children and a next door neighbour. The tragedy itself was overshadowed by the fact that whoever authorized and whoever built these apartments did so without requiring or providing fire escapes, which contributed directly to at least two of the deaths from people trying to escape the inferno. In a developed nation someone or someones would have had to resign if not be fired by now as a tragedy of such epic proportions requires that the someone along the food chain most responsible pay the ultimate price while an investigation is launched to determine liability. In failing nations the public is distracted, the issue deflected, calls for enquiries misdirected, and life goes back to normal with those dying needless deaths having died for nothing.
  
  Also in the spotlight was the plight of at least five families in Woodbrook, among them a seventy five year old grandmother who are literally suffering at the hands of the heartless. Based on reports the offspring of some well off and well educated people have decided to establish a night club on a side street in Woodbrook oblivious to the impact such a business might have on the lives of those who call that street home. When informed of the disturbance that they were in fact causing they seemed more interested in what they could get away with rather than what was right. Despairing from the lack of any real response from the authorities, one of the neighbours put up a video on the internet for the world (or at least those in Trinidad who still care) to see, and what was seen to be happening to these people could only be described as abuse. Begging many questions, not the least of which being who could have approved such a misguided misadventure in the first place as the statutes and laws governing the approval of licenses are quite clear. Relying on at least two agencies to confirm that such an establishment would not be a nuisance to surrounding neighbours, someone along the line either failed to do his job or corrupted it, and here we are, with one set of people going about the business of making a dollar while the other set, now victims of the first, are no longer able to sleep at night.
  
  When the people who are supposed to enforce the law seem to not be bothered to or are readily willing to corruptly work against it, and when those who are reasonably expected to know better don't, then all that is left to do is to record the decline. Countries like Mexico, Columbia and Panama do not happen without the misguided will of a misguided people, and while Haiti was pressed down by external forces, the destruction wrought on its people was mainly the result of internal forces, of cruel acts perpetrated by those with power over those without, of taking advantage wherever it could be found regardless of the consequences of one's actions on others or on the nation as a whole.
  
  If this sounds anything like Trinidad & Tobago it is because this is exactly where we find ourselves right now. Where we go from here is anybody's guess, but based on current trends we'd all better start planting bananas as it seems a banana Republic is all that we aspire to be...

  

  Plain Talk - Phillip Edward Alexander: Failing Forward....

  plainlytalking.blogspot.com 

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