The Freedom Chambers' Call for Order!

The Freedom Chambers has watched on as a Nation descends into honey covered chaos - plagued by bobol, failures of accountability, substandard healthcare,  and grossly neglected systems of law and order.

How can a Nation be allowed to continue like this? What legacy do we leave our children? What kind of Nation will we leave them? For the rich and super-rich - these things are of small concern. They export their off-spring to USA, UK and Canada etc. They too get the best of first-world health care, whilst poor people are left behind sell their life's savings to get a better deal in private healthcare - not necessarily in T&T, but in places like Venezuela

The TT Express  of 2010-01-04, early in the year gave, a flavour of what's been going on and what's in store for 2010 and beyond.

1. Squandermania – Mary King - “During the property tax debate the Opposition charged that the Government squandered almost TT$300 billion over the last eight years or so… Our manufacturers, who have found it impossible to break into the global market, have cheap, subsidised energy as their competitive advantage. When the RIC recommended rate increases for T&TEC our Government stalled these increases for years and then allowed only certain sectors to have increases, all the while subsidising T&TEC. The subsidisation of energy, the use of cheap natural resources to foster industrialisation, including the proposed aluminium smelter, is economically inefficient - squander-mania.”
2. A breakdown in trust – Express Editorial - “James Philbert provided his own insight into the central theme of this latest report. He had disclosed that some 42,000 citizens had submitted applications for firearms licences. …Such a disclosure would have presented perhaps the most graphic clue to what this new report has revealed, that public trust in the ability of the state and its related agencies in crime fighting has plummeted.”
3. The challenge of hope in 2010 – Michael Harris - “And let me make it abundantly clear that when I speak of a problem of governmental incompetence I do not refer only to the current Manning administration. While this administration may very well be the worst we have ever had the truth is that all our governments have been fundamentally and essentially incompetent.”
4. Fire storm is a-coming – Rafique Shah - “People look and listen, and they do not like what they are seeing and hearing. It’s going to get worse in 2010. While the country’s economy is resilient to a great extent, we are sure to experience the fallout from wanton wastage during the years of plenty. More people will be on the breadline even as the ranks of the underemployed swell…. That, my friends, is where the seeds of revolt find fertile ground. I write with authority on this because I’ve been there, done that. A firestorm is a-coming. Fat-cat Taylor, beware.”
5. Bobol and the Chinese connection – Selwyn Ryan – giving an insight into how China is flooding the globe with cheap labour and how Dongkey Rock is falling victim to this.
6. Sorry we can’t join you Minister Joseph – Express Editorial - “Trinidad and Tobago still registers as one of the most murderous places on the planet, a distinction in which no citizen, least of all a Cabinet minister, should take pride.”

For a good analysis of the crime numbers see: “Crime numbers that eluded Martin Joseph”. Perhaps we can be of assistance to Mr Joseph.

The projected homicide rate for 2010 is seen in the graph below. Let's see if Mr Josephs 'mothers' will help him keep the rate as it was in 2009, or better.

It is now time to think and plan. Maybe the electorate got it wrong. Maybe they were divided and ruled in a rather unsatisfactory way. But think - will this utter chaos, confusion, and this haemorrhaging of a Nation's lifeblood be allowed to continue? Will you allow it to continue?