PAOLO KERNAHAN
IT'S THAT time of year again - time to drape government buildings and roundabouts few Trinis understand how to use with tacky independence decorations.
It's time again to further enrich already obscenely wealthy fireworks importers by spending lavishly on ephemeral, meaningless delights that leave pets everywhere seizing with PCSD (post chupidness stress disorder).
Sixty years ago TT 'gained' independence from a dismantled empire feverishly shedding colonies. On this anniversary it's good to have a sobering look at how far we haven't come, even as we raise our glasses and bare our as--s in a lukewarm celebration of not very much.
Just in case this column is interpreted as a paean to British rule, it is not. The redeeming qualities of colonial administration and development are diluted beyond recognition by a legacy of oppression, exploitation and enduring schisms of race and class.
TT, with its complex mix of ethnicities, religions and disparate cultures, had all the social accelerants for post-independence anarchy. Navigating the independence of a nation is an extraordinarily complex affair. Handing over the reins of nationhood to civilisations robbed of identity for centuries is no afternoon tea.
In contrast to what happened, say, in India and on the African continent, TT had a comparatively painless breakup. We didn't suffer post-colonial convulsions of violence that sprang from tribal and religious divisions. That has been a blessing, or at least a mercy.
Are we, though, living the promise of independence sold by the architects of our alleged liberation? Or have we simply swapped the oppressors? Have we become, for the most part, comfortable with persecution and stagnation merely because the people responsible look more like us?
We bred a class of politicians wearing the suits and airs of our former masters, in blazing heat, no less. There's a bitter irony, if you care to look, in politicians germinated during the independence era obsessed with Savile Row suits. These politicians are puppeteered from behind the curtain of the moneyed classes. Together they conspire, together they deceive to pick the carcass of the independence dream clean.
TT society is more dependent than ever on failed governance and politics - mechanisms designed to keep people beholden to political parties.
Many of our people are defined by a reliance on state contracts and manna from the Government. The majority of economic activity in TT continues to be driven by state spending.
In this way, the party in power influences behaviour, purchases unflinching support, and ensures silence. Critics whose quiet can't be negotiated are destroyed by character assassins both within the Government and those who nestle at its bosom.
Our entire system of governance and administration is an apparatus designed to perpetuate dependency on the new colonial masters. In what Selwyn Ryan called the contactocracy, government and satellite agencies are made to malfunction. In this way, citizens are perpetua
