Oh what a year!
By Linda Hutchinson-Jafar
Guyana Chronicle
December 31, 2006
WHAT a year it has been or will be in the next few hours as those of us in this part of the world count down the final seconds when the new year of 2007 is ushered in like a fresh new glorious dawn.
As the first few minutes of the new year tick down, many of us will be hoping this could be a chance for new beginnings, for rebirth – both morally and spiritually - a time to shake off the immediate past, particularly if it was a bad one and resolve to do the things that would make us all better human beings for ourselves and for mankind.
Worldwide, we hope for peace to reign over the current calamitous and tumultuous state of affairs of wars and genocide.
Similarly, we will be hoping for peace to dominate our space here in the Caribbean as another year has seen blood, gut and gore as the murderous spree continues unabated.
Even some of the Caribbean islands such as Barbados, St Lucia and St Vincent can no longer pride themselves as being crime free as the murder and violence have invaded their space.
Here in Trinidad, kidnapping again reared its brutal head towards the end of the year after some months of inactivity in that area of crime.
Up to the time of writing, 51-year old supermarket CEO Vindra Naipaul-Coolman remained in the hands of her abductors, despite receiving a large ransom for her release and I'm told, a second ransom as well, from her desperate family and friends.
I have never met Mrs. Naipaul-Coolman who has come in for high praise from people, high and low in the country. I've never seen her at her supermarket where I shop regularly but I knew about her reputation for kindness and charity.
Perhaps one of her last few good deeds was hiring a group of hearing-impaired teenagers to work as packers in the check-out aisles.
No wonder workers at the supermarket were willing to give up their entire salary and their tips or part of it towards the ransom payment for this lady whom they call mom.
Like many other countries, including Guyana and Jamaica, Trinidad is badly losing the war against crime to criminals.
And despite all the money that is being pumped into air-ships, eye-in-the-sky, street cameras, super fast cars, sophisticated weaponry, radar systems and other crime-fighting technology, beefing up the police service with British Scotland Yard detectives, FBI, CIA training, criminals continue to be steps ahead.
Crime also descended to new levels in 2006 as children were the victims of some of the most unimaginable violence.
On Christmas Day, Pauline Lum Fai took toys to the grave of her six-year old son, Sean Luke whose battered and broken body was found in a shallow grave in a cane field. Two teenagers are before the court charged with his murder.
Months later, came the tragic murder of four-year old Emily Amy Annamunthodo, a victim of repeated rapes. Her step-father is before the court charged with her murder while her mother has been charged with neglect.
Running neck and neck with the crime taking place in the country were the political drama and scandals.
The biggest political drama was the jailing of former Prime Minister and former opposition leader Basdeo Panday for not declaring a London bank account.
Mr. Panday, who was given bail because of poor health and inadequate medical facilities to treat his ailments, is looking to get back into the full blast of politics after his short-lived retirement.
The second biggest political drama was the arrest of Energy Minister Eric Williams at the start of the year for allegedly accepting bribes.
Months before that, Franklyn Khan, then Works and Transport Minister and Chairman of the ruling party and former blue-eyed boy of Prime Minister Patrick Manning was arrested and charged.
Williams and Khan are facing charges of accepting bribes in exchange for contracts from a self-confessed bribe-giver who is a member of the ruling party and currently sits as a local government councillor.
Another big political drama was the split of the opposition party which saw the embattled political leader Winston Dookeran after months of ramblings and insults, forming his own Congress Of the People (COP) which in my opinion, has the goodwill of a lot of people but is yet to make the political impact that could drive a wedge in the support of the two parties in the political divide.
Taking the number one spot for the biggest drama of the year was the attempt by the police to arrest Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma and the legal battles which followed which effectively blocked the entire membership of the police service and anyone acting on their behalf from arresting and charging him.
In the end, Sharma surrendered to the police after the Privy Council dismissed an application from him, clearing the way for the police to arrest and charge him with intent to pervert the course of public justice in the trial of then opposition leader Panday.
2006 was also a year of high inflation, now into the dreaded double digit with the most affected being the price of food.
The exceptional piece of good news was the historic involvement of the Trinidad and Tobago football team, the Soca Warriors, in FIFA's world cup tournament in Germany, which brought all the ethnic groups in the country together as a single people.
In his Christmas message to the nation, Prime Minister Manning lauded the economic achievements of his government itemising the expansion of the economy, reduced employment figures, more opportunities for people in the country, the billions of dollars being pumped into the country through new foreign investments and a whole lot more.
But as a recent editorial in the Guyana Chronicle commented, what's the point of having all this wealth when the Trinbagonian citizens cannot enjoy them, freely, without looking behind their backs?
With Trinidad and Tobago heading into general elections in the new year and political parties desperate to retain or take control of the Caribbean's most dynamic economy, I expect all sorts of creative and imaginative solutions from politicians to the crime in the country.
Politicians (yes, Kenny Anthony too) now know that safety is the number one issue for their populations.
Ken Valley, the Trade and Industry Minister in Trinidad, has admitted that the government risked losing the election if crime in the country was not brought under control.
For the ruling party, they will try to continue to delude and hoodwink the population about the crime and murder statistics, playing around with words and figures but in the end, it all adds up to murder.
Expect too, promises from the opposition parties about resuming the death penalty; about putting police officers in every nook and cranny of the country and having the solution to the crime situation in their back pocket.
As the year closes and a new one opens, may God help us all!!