THE EDITOR: Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar would seek to be a “glass” to Brutus for him to better understand his “passions of some difference” about Caesar’s emerging tyranny which would eventually lead to Brutus’s participation in Caesar’s assassination: “And since you cannot see yourself /So well as by reflection/I your glass will modestly discover you to yourself...” (Act 1 Sc 1 65-70).

Can I also "modestly” presume to provide a “glass” for our people so that they can discover themselves and become more aware of some the contradictions in their lives, recently so, which they are taking for granted?

1. It seems the best of good fortune to have the “Mother of all Carnivals,” to be able to sing, dance and be merry while others elsewhere, as in Ukraine, freeze to death in the cold or perish from a Russian missile. But what misfortune it would be if in the aftermath, because of our indifference, we have to endure the pangs of covid19 as currently in China?

2. It’s true that we seem to choose our President in true democratic fashion, but how democratic it is for such a choice to be made by a few, and this not by the character and competence of the nominee, but by the party affiliation of those making the choice?

3. How independent are our Independent senators when much more often than not they seem aligned with the powers that be, irrespective, rather than provide the oversight of true independent judgment?

4. In a democracy journalists have the right to question our leaders but how democratic is it for a leader to sternly “close down" a journalist seemingly offensive in his question?

5. The Opposition’s job is to oppose, not make the Government look good as is often touted, but is it doing its job in the people’s interest by opposing without effect or impact, or merely for the sake of it?

6. How democratic is it for some in the Opposition to conceive of the right to seek change as an attempt to be mischievous?

7. Is interfering with the Concordat as per its teacher selection process in the first instance, a move to kill the goose that has been laying the golden egg in education?

8. How moral, ethical and professional is it for an official to continue to remain in office while the portfolio in question totters as murders continue unabated, seemingly ad infinitum?

9 Where is the oversight and control as prices continue to rise even as the supply-and-demand problem is now on the wane and agricultural production likely to improve as the weather gets better?

10. Pan and sport are welcome variants to the studies of our young people, but barring those who want to pursue careers in such, is their involvement, because of improper time management, at the expense of their preparation in the academics for their future in the world of work?

The above are some contradictions any of us take for granted but would it be worth the while to sit up and think about them, and in your own little way even act upon them wherever appli