… As we Head Into The Second Decade
It’s hard to believe that we have already come to the end of the first decade of the 21st century. It was only yesterday, it seems, that widespread fear had gripped our world about possible computer system failures and pending catastrophe at the dawn of Y2K. Ten eventful years of this millennium have now passed and if the first decade is anything to go by, the world could be in for increasingly turbulent times.
 For Trinidad and Tobago it has been a decade of relative political stability, industrial peace and, most significantly, economic prosperity. How many societies could have survived the outlandishness of a President breaking an electoral tie, not through the democratic route of returning to the polls, but by choosing the victor on some subjective basis of morality?
We did—even if we are still counting the cost in the collective loss of trust in institutions now collapsing under the weight of growing illegitimacy.   
Nonetheless, the  national report card would be in the black were it not for the ugly realities of increasing murders and serious crime, deterioration in social service delivery and human development, increasing perceptions of corruption, falling education standards and a growing sense of exasperation at being short-changed on quality of life.
Once the dust settles on the UNC election and Carnival is out of the way, Trinidad and Tobago could expect to head into a long season of unrelieved tension until the next general election. If Basdeo Panday were to be returned by the UNC membership on January 24, the issue could be settled sooner rather than later. Patrick Manning would be saved a lot of trouble if he could feel confident enough to call an election now instead of having to weather the building storm of mass restlessness as contending forces vie for the one wave to  be caught all the way into Whitehall.
The Prime Minister might have expected to have harnessed this wave by now. By his calculation, he and his party should have been surfing comfortably into 2010 on a cresting wave of popularity after two international summits—unprecedented in this part of the world—  and the grand commissioning of several major projects including the new waterfront development and the performing arts centre.

But life keeps getting in the way and, to paraphrase the poet Robert Burns, the best laid schemes of mice and men can go very much awry.
Far from coasting into the homestretch, Mr Manning’s fortunes have fallen victim to a rash of unexpected occurrences and unforced errors. The global economic collapse sucked the Clico empire into its vortex of destruction with implications that remain still dangerous to the rest of T&T’s financial system while inside the government and party, Mr Manning must be wondering whether his 2007 election compromise with Keith Rowley wasn’t  a miscalculation after all.
Better to have risked PNM wrath then and scotch’d the snake at the polls than have this permanent distraction of a running war.
Meanwhile, across the land, the masses are in pain. Too many dying; too many broken; too many ill; too many angry; too many frustrated. So much injustice; so much despair; so much alienation, all combining to unleash violence on the spirit of the people.
The post-independence march to a brighter future has been halted by a deepening cloud of  unrelieved cynicism among a people too afraid to believe in anything more elevated than self. Private gain at the expense of public good is rampant, from captain to cook with the worst offenders being among the most self-righteous. It didn’t—and doesn’t—have to be like this. Every prime minister from Williams to Manning has had his chance to turn the tide. Sadly, none has had the courage to resist the temptation of the quick-fix even if all have had the instinct to find some common basis for national endeavour. As the most recent expression of such, Vision Twenty20 should have delivered the broad outlines of a republican Project for Society shared by all, given the grand scale of public participation and personal investment by so many. Instead, it has been left to dry on the vine, surviving only as a ghostly echo in the corridors of officialdom and as a rubber-stamped rationale for decision-making. 
In this climate of psychic dread, who can believe that an election—any election—will make any difference? If nothing else, the last 30 years should have taught us is that winning elections is the easy part, especially when the incumbent falls victim to self-inflicted wounds. 

All it takes is some good spin doctors and a large crowd entertained on rum, roti, wine and jam to unleash an avalanche of electoral hysteria designed to carry one all the way to the polls.  What is truly hard is winning the electorate’s commitment to a shared view of the future and keeping them as full partners in that project.
Perhaps in this Chinese Year of the Tiger, we  will find the courage to dare to dream again and to believe that the creation of an enlightened, progressive, humane, efficient republic is within our scope and that within each of us lies the ability and the power to insist that it be so.