One of the few things that disgusts me terribly is the statement “hard luck” especially after a team or individual fails at sporting events. In international football for example, there are management teams that look after, strategy, diet, exercise, finance, player benefits, uniforms, and training facilities. These management teams prepare months, sometimes years in advance of major games. So, when Trinidad & Tobago picks up a team and start training for months sometimes weeks in advance of major games, with players who have doubles or bake and shark for breakfast, without a diet plan, without physical therapists, without trained specialists in the sporting disciplines and they lost; we respond, “hard luck”. It is not hard luck, if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
Investment in sports unites a nation, motivates our young people to aspire to the levels of success of their sporting heroes and provides very good financial reward. Our secondary schools should not only have adequate sporting equipment, but fields should be prepared to international standards. There ought to be swimming facilities and space within the communities for pursuing athletics.
Perhaps it may be best for the supporters of the two major political parties to encourage their leaders to take a little advice instead of rushing to social media to make derogatory commentaries or point to video clips of their politicians picking up garbage on a beach or handing our hampers to a few desperate souls.
Already, the unions are angry. The freeness, lack of social responsibility and political gratuity that they have grown accustomed to or were promised has now been challenged by international economic hardships. And rather than collectively seeking economic solutions they see electing someone else, someone who despite the harsh economic realities will give them the raises they demand as the way forward.
If this nation fails to put adequate infrastructure and management in place to reliably distribute water, then communities like Moruga will continue to experience weeks without pipe borne water. If our government fails to provide viable alternatives to criminal activity, then our young people armed with high powered weapons will continue killing each other. If we fail to place police on patrols at our river mouths where criminals drive their powerful boats inland to trade in guns and drugs, then murder will continue to escalate in our nation. If we fail to restructure our judicial system to allow for quick and fair conflict resolution and justice, then citizens will take justice into their own hands.
Continuing along the path of political old talk that borders on the obscene instead of intelligent appropriate planning will lead us to continued decay. Then as we stand above the bullet riddled bodies of our youths and face growing economic hardships, the politicians that we put there and continue to support may likely respond “hard luck”. If we fail to make necessary, intelligent political changes, then we are unlikely to have positive change.
God Bless Our Nation.
Steve Alvarez
