We have the highest concentration of white collar criminals per square inch in the world, not one has ever been prosecuted, and you don’t get yet that every prime minister, every government minister, every commissioner of police, the law association and every silent senior public office holder has had to have known about ALL of it? Or did you think they were all just stupid, clueless and incompetent? You really think it is by accident our system can arrest and prosecute little criminals but not even the commissioner has legal authority to touch the big ones without permission? Three thousand BILLION dollars unaccounted for PLUS a massive narcotics trade estimated at over a hundred billion a year through this country, and you thought Eric, George, Patrick were blundering idiots and Basdeo, Kamla and Keith inept morons? You not tired of being played? You just found out in one six month period that Cabinet members were pedophiles molesting children entrusted to state institutions and Prime Ministers aware of which massive businesses were behind the drug trade, and you’re still okay having those same gangs run the country? And surprised when they don’t care if your children are educated or if there is a hospital in an emergency? If there is food for you to eat or water in your taps? Or if there is an ambulance while you’re dying or a police officer when you’re in danger? When one little stunt artist that built a multi hundred million dollar overpass on his own land tells you patch your own roads? When the attorney general could break the law internationally and still practice law locally, while his predecessor used office to enrich his in laws with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars renting useless buildings, and HIS predecessor is before the courts for attempting to pervert the course of justice? You’re not tired of sticking your head in the sand as yet? When their only defense is that the other side might be so much worse? You’re not tired of ruining your children’s future by being lazy and irresponsible with your vote? When you tell the stories of Gene Miles, Selwyn Richardson and Dana Seetahal, what do you say they died from and why? Who do you say killed them? When you know in your hearts many of the business empires in this country that sprang up out of nothing could only have cocaine or corruption dollars to thank even as they give themselves silk and national awards, are you okay hearing the same people bemoaning the state of crime in the country? Do you really think I’m the ONLY politician who knew we would save hundreds of prisoner transport millions if we built the courts adjacent to the jails? You think I’m the only one who knows if we put the thirty thousand idle farmers on the ninety thousand idle acres of state owned farm land we could save foreign exchange, create jobs and slash the price of food? You think I’m the only politician that knows we get a hundred times more water from the sky for free as rain than we could ever use, and that the solution to having water twenty four hours a day nationally was as simple as capture, hold, treat, distribute? That desalination in a rainforest climate eas theft? That the same plan would end flooding? You think I’m the ONLY leader that knows that securing the borders would end the drug trade? When ministers (plural) of national security like Young and Hinds tell you our borders CANNOT be secured, you ever wonder what magic they use in New York? Japan? Israel? Cuba? Singapore? Places where nothing has gotten in and out for decades? You’re not fed up of being ashamed of every single Parliamentarian past or present for their silence or their collusion? You’re not sick to death of the anxiety of not knowing who to fraid more, police or thief? Yet we STILL cannot get an internal affairs bureau? So we stick with political appointees in complaints authorities? You’re not fed up of knowing your silence is built on fear of your government and you don’t trust any of it? Do you think it is by accident NOTHING works in this country? The billions spent every year on public health and education, where do you think that money goes? When yor wife, mother or daughter sits in a chair in pain for days in any of the hospitals, do you REALLY think it’s the nurses or doctors to blame for the abject horror that is our five BILLION dollar a year health care? When you find out we pay more per term for school children in Beetham, Cocorite and Tabaquite than the most expensive, exclusive private schools yet more than fifty percent of our children fail, do you believe it is by accident? Do you think the principals of the private schools know something Prime Ministers don’t? When you see farmers selling under state provided tents and you feel proud, how do you feel knowing taxpayers pay for those tents hundreds of times more in an hour than those farmers could make in a year, and it would be cheaper and better to just give them the money? Faris said prisoners cost the state almost thirty thousand dollars a month.
The prisons commissioner says that money does not reach the prisons. So who gets it? When every other country in the world makes billions off their ports, why would ours LOSE billions every year? Telecommunications is the second largest profit maker in the world, why do ours lose money and need rescuing? Do you honestly believe the savannah stage costs more than a million to build and take down? You ever wonder why Phillip Edward Alexander is the ONLY politician blocked from traditional media? You think without him and social media you would have known about the state abandoned killing of four men in a pipe at Paria? Or the high level land grab at Wildflower Park? Phillip Edward Alexander has been calling for an audit of Lake Asphalt for two decades. Why don’t we know how much money the pitch lake makes? Why is it omitted from the budget, even if all we’re getting is a rent or a royalty? You’re not fed up yet? What did TSTT buy when they bought Massy Media for those tens of millions? Why can we find money to build a billion dollar overpass for the wealthy at West Mall but there’s no money to patch the holes in your street? Are you fed up yet? Fed up enough to actually stand for something? Phillip Edward Alexander is the ONLY politician questioning the lack of laws to rein in rapacious bank fees and the fact that banks pay practically zero interest on your funds but generate billions lending it out, why doesn’t the Parliament? If their job is to represent you, why aren’t they doing that? If Phillip could fix roads and infrastructure, mount rescues and expose wrong doers without holding public office, if he can advocate change through policies the other parties have to copy to sound relevant, why are you voting for them if you get nothing in return? Do you understand the power of ten thousand standing, one hundred thousand gathering, or one million voting for a better country as yet? Because if we’re not fed up, or concerned, or angry enough to stand together then nothing can change, because no one can fix all of this without your support.
If you’ve gotten to this point and recognize those who hold or have held public offices of authority and did nothing about any of it but give you lame excuses and blame, how do you feel knowing both of those tribally divisive parties are equally responsible for all of the above, and that appeals to your race at election time was just to fool you? That the same contract mafia building five million dollar police stations for fifty million under PNM were building five million dollar health centers for fifty million under UNC?
That the same food mafia continues to make billions importing what our frustrated farmers could grow for pennies? That the same banking mafia takes your foreign exchange at six dollars for one and sells it back to you at six dollars and seventy cents for one for no reason that makes sense, the highest foreign exchange spread in the world?
A country whose economy was built on the export of oil and gas, that exported more than it imported for fifty of our sixty years, why would our dollar be so weak? Barbados that exports practically nothing yet imports everything, why is its dollar so strong? Who benefits from that exchange rate spread?
Many of these questions are for the media and the Parliament, why do neither ask any?
Thousands of people’s loved ones die each year from violence and preventable illnesses or manageable diseases in this country, why aren’t we asking why that might really be so?
Why do we all believe in our hearts that the only way to be truly happy and successful is to leave Trinidad, and not realize as yet that the governments past and present are responsible for that sad state of affairs, and that a proper government disconnected from all those mafias could fix it?
This started off as one question and became this. Given Parliamentary privilege I would drag every national shame and secret out into the open and we could finally get answers to why this beautiful paradise could be so blighted and broken.
I ask you to save it and share it. I ask you to encourage others to get into the conversation. Politics is the art by which the best of people could be elected to lead and nations rise to prosperity where the well-being of all citizens become the underpinning purpose of Parliament, Cabinet and government.
We’ve had sixty years of abuse.
Don’t you think it’s time we tried something else?
By Phillip Alexander