INDEPENDENT Senator Hazel Thompson-Ahye claimed that recent and ongoing events in Trinidad and Tobago may have created the impression in certain quarters that its people are lawless and bad behaviour is the order of the day.
Thompson-Ahye made this claim during her contribution to the budget debate in the Senate on Tuesday. After referring to an unnamed pair of radio talk show hosts who allegedly use bad language during live broadcasts "oblivious to the fact that the children are listening," Thompson-Ahye said, "It is not only on the airwaves that we encounter intemperate language. There is an escalation in the verbal warfare everywhere. In the streets...on platforms..various podiums and in social media."
She said a budget is not only about charting a country's path forward with fiscal and physical infrastructure. "It is also about building a society and a people."
In what seemed to be a subtle reference to events leading up to the collapse of the Police Service Commission (PSC) last month, the failure of a merit list for candidates for commissioner of police (CoP) to be sent to the House of Representatives for consideration and related subsequent events, Thompson-Ahye said, "As we look forward the future we must be careful that the tenor of our public discourse does not evidence blatant disrespect of our leaders and cherished institutions."
She warned, "It would be a supreme irony if under the guise of seeking to uphold and preserve our sacred institutions..we desecrate and destroy those very institutions."
Thompson-Ahye said the words of William Shakespeare were relevant to this situation when in his play Julius Caesar he quoted Mark Antony saying judgment has "fled to brutish beasts."
She said equally relevant were the words of the prophet Isaiah.
"The prophet Isaiah said what perversity is this, these people approach me only in words, honour me only with lip service but their hearts are far from me." Thompson- Ahye added, "I pray to have Isaiah's faith."
She also said some of her friends in other Caribbean countries are baffled why there is opposition by some people in TT towards paying property tax.
Thompson-Ahye said, in recent conversations with friends in Barbados, Jamaica and Guyana to announcements of property tax payments in each of those countries, she learnt people in those countries had no problem paying those taxes.
She said her Jamaican friend went so far as to say, "You Trinis are a set of lawless people." Thompson-Ahye told senators, " Well, I cut the conversation short."
Thompson-Ahye said successive governments have kicked property tax down the road over the years.
"Neither wanted to score a goal for this country but to win votes from the electorate. The day of reckoning is here."
Thompson-Ahye said people would react differently if Government presented it differently.
"If the Government were to announce Carnival were to be held in 2022, some of the very people who say they cannot pay property tax..they will start to jump around..they will fall down on the ground..t
