REGINALD DUMAS

Pt II

WE ENTER our 61st year of political independence in a sombre mood. Worries and complaints abound: violent crime; drifting and angry youth; a rapidly escalating cost of living; deficient institutions, including a creaking judiciary, some of whose members, remarkably, chastise one another in public; apparent suggestions of primacy of political party over country; a public service to which the word 'service' is deemed alien; collapsing infrastructure (and possible resuscitation of past failures like 'special purpose companies'); a continuing shortage, if not absence, of official consultation with the people; destructive weather; new forms of corruption; trade union fury; a sharp rise in the number of have-nots, with widening, and disquieting, inequities - which, to add further disquiet, have strong racial characteristics - between them and the haves; and so on.

It has often been asserted that TT is a failed state. That is nonsense, and I would suggest to those who peddle it that they get a good political science definition of the term. Better, they should see some of the countries I have, in Africa and Asia. Or the Caribbean. How many of the critics have ever visited Haiti? And eaten a mud pie for the day's sustenance? Oh, you didn't know about the nutritional and therapeutic qualities of mud?

For a tiny place - our population is only a bit more than half that of Brooklyn, New York - we haven't done badly. But it's nonetheless true that we haven't done as well as we could and should have, and that our current condition is disturbing. Yes, there has been a worldwide decline, but we can do better. Yes, we can!

Sixty years ago we would talk and reflect. We widely held and practised certain values - of family, community, etc - which are in very short supply today. Institutions like the judiciary were strong and respected, and the public service, now the butt of politician and proletarian alike, had titans like William Demas, J O'Neil Lewis, Frank Rampersad, Doddridge Alleyne, etc. Self-discipline was everywhere evident, even if there were the unavoidable aberrations.

Today, abetted by the social (frequently anti-social) media, we spend too much time and energy on the superficial and personal, on tearing down rather than constructing, on pointing fingers at others rather than pointing the way forward, on sneering rather than suggesting, on dependency rather than self-reliance, on effects rather than causes. Critical thinking is in short supply. Our education efforts still emphasise academic prowess, largely in a planning and development vacuum.

Party politics hasn't helped, of course. Over the decades, commitment to the best interests of the country came increasingly to be seen as coterminous with commitment to party. (And, of course, to race, since the main parties were thus divided.) I had to resist certain pressures myself; I was even offered ministerial office. I have however remained politically unaligned.

1970 brought certain societal benefits; 1990 none I know of. And th

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