"The bottom line in the road"
For years now, most "Trinidad" Carnival costumes have been made in China and shipped complete to Trinidad in the very cardboard box you're handed when you reach the mas point of sale. (You can't in conscience call these retail outlets "mas camps".) All the bands do is write your name in felt pen on the box and hand it to you-and if we could read Chinese characters, they wouldn't do even that, but would just take your cash. And if there's more than TT$20 worth of merchandise in your hands after the handover-including the firetrucking cardboard box-the bandleaders are robbing themselves, just robbing themselves!...
In that context, there really need be no debate about whether Carnival should be moved since it is all but irrelevant to itself and could take place on any day of the year. Or none. People foolish enough to believe Carnival still has anything to do with harnessing a people's creativity and releasing their love for life and one another are few and can safely be dismissed, like the Rights Action Group smelter protestors who will walk and whine from the NEC HQ to Pranz Gardens tomorrow. (Call Priya 328-4153.)
Trinidad is no longer the Land of the Hummingbird but the Land of the Cash Cow.... In the new Trinidad Carnival, the only thing that need be considered is not the bottom in the road but the bottom line in the road; and the empty chanting that has replaced Trinidadian music is the plainest illustration of that.
-- B.C. comes in swinging.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
18 months, 2 weeks, 5 days
4 July, 2006: first meeting to discuss new (completely re-transcribed, expanded, re-annotated) edition of V.S. Naipaul's early family correspondence
28 November, 2006: signed contract
23 January, 2007: first of three days at the Naipaul archive, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa
23 January, 2008: emailed finished manuscript (249 letters, 273 pp, approx. 130,000 wds) to publisher
(Phew!)
(Back to "Imaginary Roads"....)
4 July, 2006: first meeting to discuss new (completely re-transcribed, expanded, re-annotated) edition of V.S. Naipaul's early family correspondence
28 November, 2006: signed contract
23 January, 2007: first of three days at the Naipaul archive, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa
23 January, 2008: emailed finished manuscript (249 letters, 273 pp, approx. 130,000 wds) to publisher
(Phew!)
(Back to "Imaginary Roads"....)
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Carnival is over
So this is how it ends: with neither a bang nor a whimper, but a meeting of "stakeholders". This is the logical and utterly depressing conclusion of Carnival's mercenary debasement over the last two decades: representatives of Pan Trinbago, TUCO, the NCBA, and the NCDF want to "set Carnival to a permanent fixed date in April" because "Carnival is now an industry and like any other it needs regulating". These are the same people who have cut Carnival off from its community roots in the name of corporate sponsorship, pushed spectators off the streets and corralled masqueraders behind cordons in the name of security, suffocated real creativity in the name of profit margins, and are hell-bent on making Carnival the preserve of tourists and the comfortable middle class. Now they want to efface Carnival's ritual and historical roots in the name of convenience and efficiency, just as the PNM culture ministry effaced the Savannah barbergreen.
Minshall said it already: This Is Hell.
So this is how it ends: with neither a bang nor a whimper, but a meeting of "stakeholders". This is the logical and utterly depressing conclusion of Carnival's mercenary debasement over the last two decades: representatives of Pan Trinbago, TUCO, the NCBA, and the NCDF want to "set Carnival to a permanent fixed date in April" because "Carnival is now an industry and like any other it needs regulating". These are the same people who have cut Carnival off from its community roots in the name of corporate sponsorship, pushed spectators off the streets and corralled masqueraders behind cordons in the name of security, suffocated real creativity in the name of profit margins, and are hell-bent on making Carnival the preserve of tourists and the comfortable middle class. Now they want to efface Carnival's ritual and historical roots in the name of convenience and efficiency, just as the PNM culture ministry effaced the Savannah barbergreen.
Minshall said it already: This Is Hell.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
On being restless
... variety of actions, objects, air, places, are excellent good in this infirmity and all others, good for man, good for beast.... peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety that some count him unhappy that never travelled, and pity his case that from the cradle to his old age beholds the same still; still, still the same, the same....
--Thomas Browne, from The Anatomy of Melancholy, 2nd part., sec. 2
***
Consulting maps, assembling charts, drawing calendars; making lists of border towns, searching out accomplices' addresses; phrasebooks, timetables, gazetteers; a milky blue lake set among mountains; anthills along a red earth road; a river that bounds the known world....
"From here," he said, waving across the rice paddies, "It is straight to Argentina."
... variety of actions, objects, air, places, are excellent good in this infirmity and all others, good for man, good for beast.... peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety that some count him unhappy that never travelled, and pity his case that from the cradle to his old age beholds the same still; still, still the same, the same....
--Thomas Browne, from The Anatomy of Melancholy, 2nd part., sec. 2
***
Consulting maps, assembling charts, drawing calendars; making lists of border towns, searching out accomplices' addresses; phrasebooks, timetables, gazetteers; a milky blue lake set among mountains; anthills along a red earth road; a river that bounds the known world....
"From here," he said, waving across the rice paddies, "It is straight to Argentina."
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Monday, January 07, 2008
Laying plans
Aha: so I suspected.
The maps are blank.
Librarians have sat up through the night
erasing. Ants have been at work.
The border guards are keen on confiscation,
their messrooms are papered with pages from travellers' journals.
(A.: Am I the only one not worried?)
"Presentando Nicholas. Show him a good time,
if you know what I"--wink to the barman--"mean."
"I can be a good help for him."
"Everyone at least keeps three or four passports.
You better too."
(A.: I am undecided--malaria pills?)
Aha: so I suspected.
The maps are blank.
Librarians have sat up through the night
erasing. Ants have been at work.
The border guards are keen on confiscation,
their messrooms are papered with pages from travellers' journals.
(A.: Am I the only one not worried?)
"Presentando Nicholas. Show him a good time,
if you know what I"--wink to the barman--"mean."
"I can be a good help for him."
"Everyone at least keeps three or four passports.
You better too."
(A.: I am undecided--malaria pills?)
Friday, January 04, 2008
A year's reading
My two or three longtime readers may recall that for five years running (2002-06) I engaged in a semi-serious little exercise called the Nicholas Laughlin Book Awards (see appropriate links in the sidebar to the right), in which I listed what I thought were the best Caribbean books of the preceding twelvemonth, always accompanied by profuse caveats. Were I to keep up the tradition, I'd be announcing the 2007 version of the NLBAs just about now. Instead, I've sort of stolen my own thunder, over at Antilles--where, a few days ago, I posted the names of the 2007 CRB books of the year, as collectively chosen by the magazine's editors.
Everyone else does year-end lists, I thought, so why not us? So I asked the CRB's contributing editors what they thought were the outstanding Caribbean books of the year and collated the results--no one of us can read everything, but collectively I hope we managed not to miss any truly remarkable new titles. There were nine books on the final list: two novels, a collection of short stories, two collections of poems, two memoirs, and (intriguingly) two books on art history. They were written by two Jamaicans, a Bahamian, a St. Lucian, a Grenadian who lives in the US, a Trinidadian, a Dominican-American, a Haitian-American, and a team based at Yale. One of our rules of thumb was that all the books on the list must be of interest to general readers across the Caribbean--thus excluding scholarly books (however excellent) relevant only to specialists. Two of the books--the art history titles--are by academics and published by university presses, but both are accessibly written and have much to offer those of us outside the field who happen to be interested in what visual documents can tell us about Caribbean history and culture.
These nine were the standouts--you may as well read the list before you continue here--but of course they weren't the only noteworthy books of 2007. Editing the CRB means that I receive and skim through perhaps 150 books a year. About sixty of these get despatched to reviewers, and a few dozen more are "noticed" in our "Also noted" column. I simply don't have the time to read as many of these new titles as I'd like--who does?--but a good few make it into my own personal "to read" pile. The new Caribbean books I've enjoyed reading or have put aside for reading in due course include:
- Sharon Leach's book of stories What You Can't Tell Him, one of the year's nice surprises; life in contemporary Kingston as lived by a series of middle-class women trying to balance career, romance, and sanity, and figure out what success means. Someone described the book to me as "Sex in the City, but Jamaican", but that's not really apt--these stories are too melancholy, clear-eyed, truthful.
- V.S. Naipaul's book of linked essays A Writer's People--always interesting, always a must-read, but frustratingly self-involved, like so much recent Naipaul. It won't ever be a favourite, but it did send me back to his earlier work. (I think I was thoroughly over-Naipauled in 2007.)
- New Caribbean Poetry, the anthology edited by Kei Miller, featuring poems by eight younger poets from across the region, including a couple who were completely new to me, and whose work I'll be following carefully from now on.
- Raymond Ramcharitar's first book of poems, American Fall, which I'm glad and relieved has finally been published. I'm even more interested to read whatever he writes next. (Raymond is no fan of the CRB, as anyone who reads his now-hibernating blog already knows; I agree with him about many things, disagree about many more; but he's an often brilliant writer and one of the most intriguing public intellectuals--if such a term has any currency here--Trinidad has produced in a generation.)
- Also Kwame Dawes's memoir A Far Cry from Plymouth Rock; Anthony Jospeh's long prose-poem The African Origins of UFOs, which I heard him read from in August; and Meiling, an elegant, understated biography by Judy Raymond. Madison Smartt Bell's biography of Toussaint L'Ouverture is a to-read. Three art books I'm pleased to have on my shelf: the catalogue of Infinite Island; The Storyteller, a concise retrospective of Roberta Stoddart's career; and Cuba Avant-Garde, the catalogue of an exhibition of contemporary Cuban art from the collection of Howard and Patricia Farber.
What am I looking forward to in 2008? New novels by Marlon James and Kei Miller; Patrick French's biography of Naipaul; Edward Baugh's biography of Frank Collymore; a new book of poems by Vahni Capildeo; Ian McDonald's Selected Poems; a young adult novel by Lisa Allen-Agostini; Anu Lakhan's book on Trinidad street food. (Also, frankly, my own new edition of Naipaul's early family correspondence.)
What was my great belated discovery in 2007? The work of Alejo Carpentier, especially Explosion in a Cathedral and The Lost Steps. (Thanks to my friend Anne Walmsley for inadvertently encouraging me to pluck from the shelf my long-ignored copy of the former.)
What were the highlights of my non-Caribbean reading last year? I seem to read fewer and fewer new books. Michael Chabon is one of my favourite living writers and I felt I'd been waiting forever for his new novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union (which sent me back to re-read his three earlier novels). I can't believe I waited so long to read The Road to Oxiana, which is now one of my touchstones--and why are the rest of Robert Byron's books out of print? After years of resisting the charms of Gabriel García Márquez, I finally gave in. I continue to delve into obscurer aspects of the history and landscape of Guyana, and was arrested some months back by Graham Burnett's brilliant Masters of All They Surveyed, a study of nineteenth-century surveying, map-making, boundary-drawing, and Robert Schomburgk. I spent the last days of the waning year in the agreeable company of Jan Morris. At Marlon James's insistence, I at last read Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red, and was glad I did.
Concise version?
Book of the year, Caribbean, new: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz
Book of the year, non-Caribbean, new: The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon
Book of the year, Caribbean, non-new: Explosion in a Cathedral, by Alejo Carpentier
Book of the year, non-Caribbean, non-new: The Road to Oxiana, by Robert Byron
Writer of the year: Robert Byron.
On! on!
My two or three longtime readers may recall that for five years running (2002-06) I engaged in a semi-serious little exercise called the Nicholas Laughlin Book Awards (see appropriate links in the sidebar to the right), in which I listed what I thought were the best Caribbean books of the preceding twelvemonth, always accompanied by profuse caveats. Were I to keep up the tradition, I'd be announcing the 2007 version of the NLBAs just about now. Instead, I've sort of stolen my own thunder, over at Antilles--where, a few days ago, I posted the names of the 2007 CRB books of the year, as collectively chosen by the magazine's editors.
Everyone else does year-end lists, I thought, so why not us? So I asked the CRB's contributing editors what they thought were the outstanding Caribbean books of the year and collated the results--no one of us can read everything, but collectively I hope we managed not to miss any truly remarkable new titles. There were nine books on the final list: two novels, a collection of short stories, two collections of poems, two memoirs, and (intriguingly) two books on art history. They were written by two Jamaicans, a Bahamian, a St. Lucian, a Grenadian who lives in the US, a Trinidadian, a Dominican-American, a Haitian-American, and a team based at Yale. One of our rules of thumb was that all the books on the list must be of interest to general readers across the Caribbean--thus excluding scholarly books (however excellent) relevant only to specialists. Two of the books--the art history titles--are by academics and published by university presses, but both are accessibly written and have much to offer those of us outside the field who happen to be interested in what visual documents can tell us about Caribbean history and culture.
These nine were the standouts--you may as well read the list before you continue here--but of course they weren't the only noteworthy books of 2007. Editing the CRB means that I receive and skim through perhaps 150 books a year. About sixty of these get despatched to reviewers, and a few dozen more are "noticed" in our "Also noted" column. I simply don't have the time to read as many of these new titles as I'd like--who does?--but a good few make it into my own personal "to read" pile. The new Caribbean books I've enjoyed reading or have put aside for reading in due course include:
- Sharon Leach's book of stories What You Can't Tell Him, one of the year's nice surprises; life in contemporary Kingston as lived by a series of middle-class women trying to balance career, romance, and sanity, and figure out what success means. Someone described the book to me as "Sex in the City, but Jamaican", but that's not really apt--these stories are too melancholy, clear-eyed, truthful.
- V.S. Naipaul's book of linked essays A Writer's People--always interesting, always a must-read, but frustratingly self-involved, like so much recent Naipaul. It won't ever be a favourite, but it did send me back to his earlier work. (I think I was thoroughly over-Naipauled in 2007.)
- New Caribbean Poetry, the anthology edited by Kei Miller, featuring poems by eight younger poets from across the region, including a couple who were completely new to me, and whose work I'll be following carefully from now on.
- Raymond Ramcharitar's first book of poems, American Fall, which I'm glad and relieved has finally been published. I'm even more interested to read whatever he writes next. (Raymond is no fan of the CRB, as anyone who reads his now-hibernating blog already knows; I agree with him about many things, disagree about many more; but he's an often brilliant writer and one of the most intriguing public intellectuals--if such a term has any currency here--Trinidad has produced in a generation.)
- Also Kwame Dawes's memoir A Far Cry from Plymouth Rock; Anthony Jospeh's long prose-poem The African Origins of UFOs, which I heard him read from in August; and Meiling, an elegant, understated biography by Judy Raymond. Madison Smartt Bell's biography of Toussaint L'Ouverture is a to-read. Three art books I'm pleased to have on my shelf: the catalogue of Infinite Island; The Storyteller, a concise retrospective of Roberta Stoddart's career; and Cuba Avant-Garde, the catalogue of an exhibition of contemporary Cuban art from the collection of Howard and Patricia Farber.
What am I looking forward to in 2008? New novels by Marlon James and Kei Miller; Patrick French's biography of Naipaul; Edward Baugh's biography of Frank Collymore; a new book of poems by Vahni Capildeo; Ian McDonald's Selected Poems; a young adult novel by Lisa Allen-Agostini; Anu Lakhan's book on Trinidad street food. (Also, frankly, my own new edition of Naipaul's early family correspondence.)
What was my great belated discovery in 2007? The work of Alejo Carpentier, especially Explosion in a Cathedral and The Lost Steps. (Thanks to my friend Anne Walmsley for inadvertently encouraging me to pluck from the shelf my long-ignored copy of the former.)
What were the highlights of my non-Caribbean reading last year? I seem to read fewer and fewer new books. Michael Chabon is one of my favourite living writers and I felt I'd been waiting forever for his new novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union (which sent me back to re-read his three earlier novels). I can't believe I waited so long to read The Road to Oxiana, which is now one of my touchstones--and why are the rest of Robert Byron's books out of print? After years of resisting the charms of Gabriel García Márquez, I finally gave in. I continue to delve into obscurer aspects of the history and landscape of Guyana, and was arrested some months back by Graham Burnett's brilliant Masters of All They Surveyed, a study of nineteenth-century surveying, map-making, boundary-drawing, and Robert Schomburgk. I spent the last days of the waning year in the agreeable company of Jan Morris. At Marlon James's insistence, I at last read Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red, and was glad I did.
Concise version?
Book of the year, Caribbean, new: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz
Book of the year, non-Caribbean, new: The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon
Book of the year, Caribbean, non-new: Explosion in a Cathedral, by Alejo Carpentier
Book of the year, non-Caribbean, non-new: The Road to Oxiana, by Robert Byron
Writer of the year: Robert Byron.
On! on!
Thursday, December 13, 2007
This Friday at Alice Yard: 200 Drawings
Artists Nikolai Noel and Jaime Lee Loy (and a small audience) working on their collaborative project 200 Drawings, which opens in the Alice Yard Space on Friday 14 December.
(More photos here.)
Artists Nikolai Noel and Jaime Lee Loy (and a small audience) working on their collaborative project 200 Drawings, which opens in the Alice Yard Space on Friday 14 December.
(More photos here.)
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges
A map of the dark side of the moon, its geology indicated by colour, generated by the US Geological Survey--via Strange Maps. (No, I'm not looking for somewhere to migrate to, now that Mr. Manning is back for five.)
For no good reason, this makes me think of Rimbaud's vowels.
A map of the dark side of the moon, its geology indicated by colour, generated by the US Geological Survey--via Strange Maps. (No, I'm not looking for somewhere to migrate to, now that Mr. Manning is back for five.)
For no good reason, this makes me think of Rimbaud's vowels.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Well, scratch that out.
It turns out the figures reported by the Newsday yesterday were "very preliminary", as the second paragraph of the story clearly says. Less preliminary (but still not final) figures published by the Express today paint a different picture. Ah, the dangers of premature arithmetic.
Voter turnout was not a surprisingly low 56%, but closer to 66%, just a few points below the last election. The COP didn't snag 25% of the vote--more like 23%, and it looks like the UNC won 30%, a good 46,000 more votes in the popular count nationwide. (On the other hand, it now looks like the PNM got a mere 46%.)
So much for a 44-25 strategy.
34-23 doesn't have the same ring to it.
I think my basic argument still holds--that if the COP is to have any meaningful future role it must 1. win over non-voters and 2. turn the focus of the constitution reform debate away from executive powers and towards making the legislature more representative of actual voting patterns. But--back to those tricksy numbers--34-23 = a more toilsome fight than 44-25.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
1981, 1986, 44, 25
About a week before the general election in 1981, my standard one teacher, Miss Jacob, announced we'd be doing a classroom civics project: our own mini-election. She explained how voting worked, told us the names of the parties and their leaders, and set the date for the Friday before the real-life election day.
None of us seven-year-olds had any idea what the PNM or the ULF or the ONR were, or what was the difference between them, so naturally we went home and asked our parents who to vote for. On Friday morning, we wrote the party names and drew their symbols on strips of paper, then hunched over our ballots to mark our Xs. The "returning officer" collected them, Miss Jacob counted them, and she wrote the results on the blackboard. We were a class of perhaps twenty-four middle-class children from Port of Spain and its northern and north-western suburbs. All but two of us voted for the ONR.
When the PNM won the real grown-up election a few days later--and the ONR took not a single seat, despite winning a quarter of the popular votes nationwide--my seven-year-old self was utterly confused. It was my first experience of Trinidadian electoral politics.
Skip five years--past Plain Clothes' "Chambers Done See" and Gypsy's "Sinking Ship"--to the 1986 election. My father campaigned for the NAR in our constituency. I remember the posters with the steel-beam symbol everywhere, and the excitement and optimism, the sense that everything was about to change. And the huge victory rally in the Savannah afterwards, like a picnic the whole country was invited to.
The COP and its supporters--including many of my friends and colleagues and, finally, myself--were hoping that Monday's election would be like 1986. Instead we got 1981, like a slap in the face to bring us back to reality.
***
Number, numbers, numbers. The key ones--the heartbreaking ones--were on the front pages of the newspapers today: 26-15-0. An eleven-seat majority for Mr. Manning, but thankfully two seats short of the 28 he needs to start tinkering with the constitution. (Perhaps he'll try anyway.) The pundits will be picking over the figures for weeks, the pollsters will claim they got it right, the politicians will gloat or grumble--or, in Mr. Panday's case, foam at the mouth.
But these are the numbers that will matter in the long run: 44, which is the percentage of the registered electorate who didn't vote; that is to say, who weren't interested in the tribal politics of the PNM and the UNC but yet didn't feel motivated enough, or confident enough, to stain their fingers for the COP. And 25, which is the percentage of the popular vote the COP actually won. The UNC managed just 22.5%, but took eleven seats, thanks to the antiquated first-past-the-post system we inherited at Independence
If the COP is to have any long-term effect, if they are serious--if we are serious--about breaking the deadlock of tribal voting, those are the numbers future planning must be based on, it seems to me. And what is the 44-25 strategy? Convince the 44% that the COP is a viable option, that a vote for the COP is not a wasted vote, is more than a protest vote, and get them out to the polls next time. And work for real reform of a constitutional system that ignores the wishes of a full quarter of the electorate.
God knows what tricks Mr. Manning has planned for us in the next five years, in the name of "developed nation status". More heavy industrialisation, more skyscrapers, more legal voter padding of marginal constituencies via housing schemes, more murders, more gangs with more guns.... Five more years of being ignored or patronised by the government whose salary we're all paying, while we get more desperate and demoralised, and more of our brightest and best apply for green cards. And the last thing either the PNM or the UNC wants is an electoral system that produces a parliament reflecting the people's wishes, via some form of proportional representation. So I hardly need say that things will probably get worse before they get better, and making things better means blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
But what is the alternative?
I don't want a green card.
Update: damn numbers. See here.
About a week before the general election in 1981, my standard one teacher, Miss Jacob, announced we'd be doing a classroom civics project: our own mini-election. She explained how voting worked, told us the names of the parties and their leaders, and set the date for the Friday before the real-life election day.
None of us seven-year-olds had any idea what the PNM or the ULF or the ONR were, or what was the difference between them, so naturally we went home and asked our parents who to vote for. On Friday morning, we wrote the party names and drew their symbols on strips of paper, then hunched over our ballots to mark our Xs. The "returning officer" collected them, Miss Jacob counted them, and she wrote the results on the blackboard. We were a class of perhaps twenty-four middle-class children from Port of Spain and its northern and north-western suburbs. All but two of us voted for the ONR.
When the PNM won the real grown-up election a few days later--and the ONR took not a single seat, despite winning a quarter of the popular votes nationwide--my seven-year-old self was utterly confused. It was my first experience of Trinidadian electoral politics.
Skip five years--past Plain Clothes' "Chambers Done See" and Gypsy's "Sinking Ship"--to the 1986 election. My father campaigned for the NAR in our constituency. I remember the posters with the steel-beam symbol everywhere, and the excitement and optimism, the sense that everything was about to change. And the huge victory rally in the Savannah afterwards, like a picnic the whole country was invited to.
The COP and its supporters--including many of my friends and colleagues and, finally, myself--were hoping that Monday's election would be like 1986. Instead we got 1981, like a slap in the face to bring us back to reality.
***
Number, numbers, numbers. The key ones--the heartbreaking ones--were on the front pages of the newspapers today: 26-15-0. An eleven-seat majority for Mr. Manning, but thankfully two seats short of the 28 he needs to start tinkering with the constitution. (Perhaps he'll try anyway.) The pundits will be picking over the figures for weeks, the pollsters will claim they got it right, the politicians will gloat or grumble--or, in Mr. Panday's case, foam at the mouth.
But these are the numbers that will matter in the long run: 44, which is the percentage of the registered electorate who didn't vote; that is to say, who weren't interested in the tribal politics of the PNM and the UNC but yet didn't feel motivated enough, or confident enough, to stain their fingers for the COP. And 25, which is the percentage of the popular vote the COP actually won. The UNC managed just 22.5%, but took eleven seats, thanks to the antiquated first-past-the-post system we inherited at Independence
If the COP is to have any long-term effect, if they are serious--if we are serious--about breaking the deadlock of tribal voting, those are the numbers future planning must be based on, it seems to me. And what is the 44-25 strategy? Convince the 44% that the COP is a viable option, that a vote for the COP is not a wasted vote, is more than a protest vote, and get them out to the polls next time. And work for real reform of a constitutional system that ignores the wishes of a full quarter of the electorate.
God knows what tricks Mr. Manning has planned for us in the next five years, in the name of "developed nation status". More heavy industrialisation, more skyscrapers, more legal voter padding of marginal constituencies via housing schemes, more murders, more gangs with more guns.... Five more years of being ignored or patronised by the government whose salary we're all paying, while we get more desperate and demoralised, and more of our brightest and best apply for green cards. And the last thing either the PNM or the UNC wants is an electoral system that produces a parliament reflecting the people's wishes, via some form of proportional representation. So I hardly need say that things will probably get worse before they get better, and making things better means blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
But what is the alternative?
I don't want a green card.
Update: damn numbers. See here.
Friday, November 02, 2007
It's entirely Trinidadian, as jokey as it is heartbreaking, that, with three political parties, instead of finding one to vote for, we should end up with two to vote against.
Thanks, BC, for saying everything we need to know about this election in one sentence.
Thanks, BC, for saying everything we need to know about this election in one sentence.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Put the blame on we
As I type, the UNC is having a political meeting somewhere in my neighbourhood. The first I knew of it was the soundcheck earlier this evening; out of nowhere, a deep, excited male voice boomed through the house, making the windows rattle. "Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes!" It could have been the soundtrack to a porn movie. Then they started playing the annoying UNC campaign jingle. Now they've switched to what sounds like a parody of Akon's "Put the Blame on Me". Exactly how is this supposed to convince me to vote? It puts a definite end to my plans for a quiet night working away at my desk.
***
At least it's a change from the even more annoying PNM campaign jingle, which has been blaring from cars equipped with loudspeakers every afternoon this week. The chorus is a despairing voice bleating the name of the political leader and aspiring dictator: PATREHHHK! Then something about going down the road together. Down the road to where? National migraine?
***
In today's Express, Selwyn Ryan claims the PNM and the COP are running "neck and neck". But everyone I talk to seems morosely convinced that on 5 November the PNM will be back with a bigger majority. I don't know what would be worse: that, or a UNC government with Jack Warner and Ramesh Maharaj in high office. I wish I could believe the COP had a real chance of forming a government. I can't say I've been impressed by their campaign, or most of their candidates; but, if I'm certain of anything in Trinidad and Tobago politics, it's that Winston Dookeran is not a wicked man. Leave his real flaws aside--for now, that alone is enough.
My best realistic hope: an unstable COP-UNC coalition that collapses in a year or so and triggers fresh elections.
But I fear that on the morning of 6 November, we'll wake up and find that we're only just starting to realise what a mess we're in. Maybe we'll also finally grasp that it's our fault, not the politicians'--they're just preying on our prejudices and political immaturity. Then the real work will begin.
As I type, the UNC is having a political meeting somewhere in my neighbourhood. The first I knew of it was the soundcheck earlier this evening; out of nowhere, a deep, excited male voice boomed through the house, making the windows rattle. "Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes!" It could have been the soundtrack to a porn movie. Then they started playing the annoying UNC campaign jingle. Now they've switched to what sounds like a parody of Akon's "Put the Blame on Me". Exactly how is this supposed to convince me to vote? It puts a definite end to my plans for a quiet night working away at my desk.
***
At least it's a change from the even more annoying PNM campaign jingle, which has been blaring from cars equipped with loudspeakers every afternoon this week. The chorus is a despairing voice bleating the name of the political leader and aspiring dictator: PATREHHHK! Then something about going down the road together. Down the road to where? National migraine?
***
In today's Express, Selwyn Ryan claims the PNM and the COP are running "neck and neck". But everyone I talk to seems morosely convinced that on 5 November the PNM will be back with a bigger majority. I don't know what would be worse: that, or a UNC government with Jack Warner and Ramesh Maharaj in high office. I wish I could believe the COP had a real chance of forming a government. I can't say I've been impressed by their campaign, or most of their candidates; but, if I'm certain of anything in Trinidad and Tobago politics, it's that Winston Dookeran is not a wicked man. Leave his real flaws aside--for now, that alone is enough.
My best realistic hope: an unstable COP-UNC coalition that collapses in a year or so and triggers fresh elections.
But I fear that on the morning of 6 November, we'll wake up and find that we're only just starting to realise what a mess we're in. Maybe we'll also finally grasp that it's our fault, not the politicians'--they're just preying on our prejudices and political immaturity. Then the real work will begin.
This Friday at Alice Yard: Proverb
Still from Proverb, a video work by Mario Lewis, the second artist's project in the new Alice Yard Space at 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook; opening on Friday 19 October.
Still from Proverb, a video work by Mario Lewis, the second artist's project in the new Alice Yard Space at 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook; opening on Friday 19 October.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Friday, September 14, 2007
Balkan perils
A friend travelling in the Balkans writes from Ljubljana:
"The drunk Kiwi girl continued her violent rampage for about 2 hours, assaulting anyone who got near her. The police came and she assaulted them too. They handcuffed her and took her away. After that there was a lot of talk about it, and we went to a nightclub around the corner from the hostel which played the worst music I have ever heard in a club. Did anyone dance to 'Eye of the Tiger' when it was popular? One big guy in the club suddenly walked up to me, hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. He then told me that he liked me. The Danish guy I was with (who bore the brunt of the Kiwi attack) asked for a kiss as well, and the man said 'silly white man!' I am exotic, it seems."
A friend travelling in the Balkans writes from Ljubljana:
"The drunk Kiwi girl continued her violent rampage for about 2 hours, assaulting anyone who got near her. The police came and she assaulted them too. They handcuffed her and took her away. After that there was a lot of talk about it, and we went to a nightclub around the corner from the hostel which played the worst music I have ever heard in a club. Did anyone dance to 'Eye of the Tiger' when it was popular? One big guy in the club suddenly walked up to me, hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. He then told me that he liked me. The Danish guy I was with (who bore the brunt of the Kiwi attack) asked for a kiss as well, and the man said 'silly white man!' I am exotic, it seems."
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
This Friday at Alice Yard: Rack
Rack, a drawing installation by Adam Williams, will be the first artist's project in the new Alice Yard Space at 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook, which opens on Friday 14 September.
Rack, a drawing installation by Adam Williams, will be the first artist's project in the new Alice Yard Space at 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook, which opens on Friday 14 September.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Encoded
From the personal archive: Code was a "magazine" I "published" seven-odd years ago. It ran to two issues, each of which consisted of an eleven-by-seventeen-inch sheet of paper laser-printed on both sides, folded down to make sixteen pages, each four and a half by five and a half inches. To read it, you had to unfold the sheet. I must have printed twenty or so copies of each issue, and for the life of me I can't remember what I did with most of them, or who might have read them. Almost needless to say, I wrote all the content myself. I also can't remember why I never "published" issue three.
From the personal archive: Code was a "magazine" I "published" seven-odd years ago. It ran to two issues, each of which consisted of an eleven-by-seventeen-inch sheet of paper laser-printed on both sides, folded down to make sixteen pages, each four and a half by five and a half inches. To read it, you had to unfold the sheet. I must have printed twenty or so copies of each issue, and for the life of me I can't remember what I did with most of them, or who might have read them. Almost needless to say, I wrote all the content myself. I also can't remember why I never "published" issue three.
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