i started reading this and as soon as I past the first paragraph, i knew where he/we were going. i immediately thought, if ever i could nominate someone for a national award, if they mean anything any more; perhaps we the citizens will construct a new award structure, apart from the defilement of recent years and the last decade...but i digress..i would nominate Peter OConnor...for being a voice of the people and one sans acrimony, charges and contestation. He has been at various points wrote to tell us what was happening, whether we ignore his writing or not, do nothing/ but just to recognize he tried, and did so competently and eloquently, even if we were not so intelligent or not at all to comprehend his meaning, the implications of what he was telling. but he does it. he did it. and i think this piece so far might be the piece d' resistance.
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LOCKED OUT OF THE COCKPIT?
By Peter O’Connor, for publication Sunday 5th April 2015.
It is important for every concerned citizen of T&T to try to put themselves in the place of the pilot, cabin crew and passengers aboard the ill-fated German Wings Flight 9525. We need to grasp the horror which would have dawned upon first, the flight’s captain, then cabin crew, and finally the passengers, as they waited helplessly for eight minutes--- an eternity indeed—for impact and their instant deaths.
The person at the controls thought nothing of the one hundred and forty nine others when he locked the cockpit door and deliberately flew the plane on its new course to destruction. What thoughts might have run through this co-pilot’s mind as he sat there, hearing his captain trying to get the door open, so that the plane and its passengers could be saved? Try to imagine--, imagine that you were on board, imagine the utter disbelief and then the helplessness as it dawned upon you, upon everyone, what was about to happen?
We need to learn to feel—to feel what those persons must have felt, even to the very marginal extent that we could imagine such a horror at all. And the reason why we need to embrace such feelings is because we too, all of us, are locked out of the cockpit of Flight T&T. Of course I know that we are not headed for the same violent impact, and we have a bit longer than eight minutes to break the locks and regain control of our headlong flight to destruction. But make no mistake, the parliament of Trinidad & Tobago, which is the control room for how we fly or crash, is in the hands of two pilots, neither of whom is capable of taking us safely to a destination of promise. While they can alternate, with their flight crews, between going to the toilets and refusing to deliver us to any meaningful destination, we remain helplessly and haplessly unable to do anything about what is now our fate.
We will crash sooner rather than later, and it will not really matter which crew is in the cockpit or the toilet at the time. More and more of us are awakening to this hopeless realization. We do not have, and we seem unable to find, a crew capable of governing our country, managing to stabilize the flight and take us and our children to the destinations which are within sight of almost all of us.
As we hurtle headlong into confusion, where personal vilification has replaced parliamentary debate, where revelations of alleged massive corruption pour forth daily, a few, cursed with short memories, or simply waiting their turn to enter the cockpit, revive the memory of Dr. Eric Williams, and pretend that when he ruled, there was no corruption, and that there was competence and fairness in the management of Flight T&T.
Please understand that since Independence, and even well before, we have been a totally corrupt and grossly incompetent country. Back in Williams rule, starting before Independence, we had the Voting Machines scandal, then the revelations of Gene Miles and the Gas Station racket, then the Tesoro and DC-9 scandals. These were followed, as a matter of course, with the Government to Government contracts and the infamous Caroni Race Track travesties of corruption and incompetence.
While the Chambers’ PNM and the NAR’s Robinson were not rocked by new major scandals neither could keep our flight airborne, and Robinson crash landed in July 1990, but it was not until 1991 that he walked away from the wreckage. Patrick Manning tried to keep the plane aloft, but he fell out with his chosen Speaker, placed her under house arrest and decided upon an emergency landing for new fuel and crew. But he forgot to lock the cockpit door, and Basdeo Panday and the UNC took over the plane.
Well, that reign brought us the Piarco Airport corruption, in which, while the Americans involved have been tried and jailed, their Trini Partners remain free, and all that led to Section 34 twelve years on. After the (18- 18 seats) tied election of 2001, a vengeful President “awarded” our governance to the PNM citing “moral and spiritual values”. Well, those values failed their test with Calder Hart, the persecution of the Chief Justice, and the church which Manning was building for his seer-woman!
Our succession of governments, from Williams to Kamla has failed at governance, nation-building and competence. They have all excelled at corruption and nepotism and personal enrichment.
So when you call to bring back who previously failed us, then your indignation can only be that it is “them”, not “us” who are currently locking the cockpit, and damning Flight T&T to certain disaster.
We must take back control from the cycle of PNM and UNC.
800 words
---------------------------as can be viewed in Easter Sunday Trinidad Tobago Newsday
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