When I see Renuka Sagramsingh, Rohan Sinanan et al in their caricaturing jumbie moko mode, I can’t help but remember the geriatric Tobago clown in their last Assembly election contort and distort himself as he flung himself this way and that way in the middle of the road in a disgraceful, primitive act of gyration as he celebrated a PNM victory that never happened. You remember that fellow? His claim to fame was his descent into full-fledged asininity.
It should have been a lesson for the PNM but when your head hard nothing comes easy. 14-1 in Tobago could become 14-0 in Trinidad. Impossible? That’s what lots of analysts said in that Tobago election only to have mud thrown in their faces.
The asinine fellow in Tobago is being replicated here by his chief doppelganger, that Sagramsingh imposter, who feels when the IQ challenged PNMites applaud her, it is something to be celebrated and not something to see as a Judas moment for her.
Hear what makes 14-0 possible: The diehards of the PNM were those who Eric Williams dragged in from the small islands in 1961 and they had a good run. Diehards they were but in the 62 years since then most of those diehards would have died and been buried leaving behind born and bred Trinis to the bone who just know Williams to have been a name in our politics.
Truth is, their loyalty to the PNM is a bit watered down and they would like the undiluted brandy that others are offering which makes them the game changers. They want water, smooth roads, employment, personal safety that this government has not provided them not because it is financially bankrupt but because it is intellectually bankrupt – bankrupt of ideas to move forward, invent and create opportunities rather than break up and mash up what we have as when you bring your pot hound in your house and instead of protecting it for you, it thrashes it to smithereens.
Closing down Petrotrin in any other country would have seen, in the spirit of Shariah Law, heads literally roll down the promenade but we not only treated it with a powder puff response, but the culprits are expecting citizens to ignore this criminal act and vote them back into power and you know why, because Trinis for them are not just peace loving but gathering their data from balisier house, we are hopelessly dotish.
Tobago, however, realised that they are just a voting bank for the PNM and let them know via 14-1, enough is enough. In defence of our own self-respect and the belief we bright too bad, we must go a step farther and make it 14-0, you hear?
L. Siddhartha Orie