I don't know whether Pa-trick is a truly evil man. The more I think of it, I think he is a man who does what he does, simply because he can. He has no one to reign him in. Panday? He spends more time worrying about his own legal problems to think about anything else really. And at 74 or so, he needs someone to wipe his arse after every shit, so no counting on help there.
Ramesh, Kamla? Dey fraid Panday get dem kicked out so they toeing the line. Warner have a lil clout, but only because he has a fat wallet, but that black man know he place.
In the long wrong, Trinidad is really like that island in William Golding's Lord of the Flies. In face of people who do not stand up for themselves, the stronger will always win the day. They will take and take, ruthlessly thrusting aside feeble protests, simply because they can.
Patrick is no different. Aside from the lone, occasional protest, who has really tried to stop him? no one. My blog, this blog, several reporters, Inshan Ishmael, and a couple of people like Martin Daly and occasionally Anand and Raffique Shah will write a few dissenting lines.
But no one actually makes an effort to stop him. And like Jack, the 'hunter' of Golding's story, Pa-trick knows that he can control it all, through a sheer mass of numbers. And like Jack's followers who are scared of him, Pa-trick's are as well. They do not seem to realise that en masse they have the ability to remove him. Instead, the thinking of every follower is that he stands alone, and that if s/he were to try to form an alliance to dethrone the super ruler, then betrayal may follow as one tattle tales to gain more lucrative benefits from a leader in power. A reward for the leader maintaining the status quo. (Jack is the kind of person which Golding believed everyone would eventually become if left alone to set one’s own standards and live the way one naturally wanted.)
Trinidad will never improve. We all know this. In my case, I have close family there, and I constantly HOPE that things will improve. But in reality I know it never will. Partly because the educated are leaving Trinidad in droves, a full 78% every year for the past 5 years. (Perhaps Captain will like to post that graph in response to this).
The other part is that Pa-trick has no desire for the educated to return. A man who is king of monkeys, sad to say, is still a king. The right of kings has always been to be privileged. So ask yourself, is Pa-trick doing anything else besides following nature? The answer is no.
He is simply obeying a voice, a calling, laid down eons past, and which is now beating in his chest.
