PRESIDENT Christine Kangaloo’s attempt to play down painful national crises is typical of high office holders insulated from the reality of ordinary citizens.
Kangaloo suggests that youths could find solace in the steelband, although successive PNM administrations refused to protect, commercialise and develop the national instrument.
Years ago, economist and planner Lloyd Best recommended that pan halls be set up in communities to keep youths engaged and to cultivate business and professional skills.
These proposals were ignored in the same way the planned Pan Trinbago headquarters and performance theatre at Trincity was sidestepped.
Some 94 years after the steelband’s invention, the wonderful innovation has been belatedly recognised as the national instrument, never mind Albert Gomes’ firm advocacy more than 70 years before.
Gomes, a prominent elected politician during colonialism, touted the steelband as a means of socially and economically lifting youths of depressed communities.
Gomes and others fought for official recognition and commercial development for the steelband.
Kangaloo served in various senior capacities in PNM administrations that paid no mind to pan.
Best’s comprehensive design centred around adapting “the pan yard into an economic zone and an education plant, as well as the breeding ground for community and culture.”
Again, no action from the authorities!
Steelband aside, Kangaloo is urging the population not to lose hope even as she enjoys elaborate security and does not have to face steep grocery prices.
What does she know of the people who risk being gunned down for simply walking public streets or enduring home invasions because they toiled and afforded some family comforts?
Why doesn’t she pressure Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley – they ought to meet at least once a week – to confront the crime epidemic, starting with sacking the chronically failed Fitzgerald Hinds?
Why doesn’t the Head of State call the Prime Minister to account on the many collapsed anti-crime measures, flawed law enforcement appointments, lack of returns for taxpayer-funded resources and the useless Caricom security talks?
The distressing answer is that occupants of President’s House typically play footsy with the Government.
In the early 1980s, when the country was falling apart (the electorate eventually kicked out the PNM Government), then-President Ellis Clarke damned critics as “prophets of gloom and doom.”
Mighty Sparrow rendered a dramatic rejoinder in “The Prophet of Doom.”
Kangaloo’s public moralising should include an explanation for the replacement of Rajendra Ramlogan as chair of the Integrity Commission.
Ramlogan was given walking papers not long after Rowley attacked him for bemoaning insufficient funding for the commission.
Kangaloo should justify the non-renewal of the employment contract of Deborah Thomas-Felix as President of the Industrial Court.
Ms. Thomas-Felix had ruled for workers in some matters, prompting the ire of big business, which bellyached to the Government.
The country would appreciate Kangaloo’s take on the decimation of independent institutions, watering down of critical legislation to get parliamentary approval, and widening gap between rich and poor.
Agencies tell of growing malnutrition as more poor people fall under the poverty line, even as Rowley denies there is a crisis with destitution and hardship.
Kangaloo should raise her influential voice on the burning issues if she wants to convince the nation she feels its hurt and would employ her exalted office for positive change.
Until then, the country appreciates that she is scoring cheap headlines while social and economic crises engulf the land.
She is just another President shielded from the national truth but who wants to appear to be grounded with the masses.
Steups, Ms. Kangaloo.
