All Hands on Deck
Submitted by The Mahogany Coconut Group
A collective panic has now invaded the Caribbean region.From CARICOM to cricket, we seem to be making one blunder after the other ,casting blame left , right and center.
Those who played pivotal roles in developing the monster are now dishonestly declaring that they do not know from whence it came!
Those who understand the historical journey of our people recognize that the problems are not of recent happenings .The truth is that the entire region has been on automatic pilot since the early sixties.
We refused to revolutionise our education system, buried agriculture, ignored our infrastructure and environment and created a large middle class that is essentially debt ridden while the traditional corporate class continues to pull the strings and direct economic development from the board room.
I know that there are many among us would claim that all of this is old rhetoric and no longer relevant to our “emerging” societies..However if they look at the major corporations , they would see that names have changed but players remain the same.
In every society we can point to a few who have made it but we never want to look at those who have fallen through the cracks and are rapidly becoming dangers to all who cross their path.
We lament the fact that most regional law enforcements agencies cannot keep up with the criminal element .However we will never admit that the educational model we continue to use is in some way responsible for the criminals we breed.
We watch our land disappear and tremendous strain being placed on our sewage disposal system.However we will never admit that when we abandoned agriculture that was the trade off for placing our economic fate in the hands of tourism.
In the mean time our roads, hospitals and schools continue to fall into disrepair because we have to feed the economic monster and keep the middle class happy.Therefore luxury cars costing, in some cases, a couple hundred thousand dollars, are traveling on roads inferior to those traveled on by donkey carts in the sixties.
Children go into schools today that are more unsanitary than those of forty years ago because we cannot maintain the buildings.
We need to have another rendevous with the passion that led us into independence and direct our energies toward a collective effort to once more take our destiny in our hands and treat our citizens with the respect their deserve.
We are in desperate need of leaders who can face the people themselves and not depend on American styled sound bites, political public relations and well trained political operatives to do their dirty work.
Our history teaches us that we were able to overcome slavery .A people that have overcome such a travesty must realize that they are capable of overcoming the socio economic problems which we now confront.
History is on our side.All hands on the Caribbean deck!!!!
A collective panic has now invaded the Caribbean region.From CARICOM to cricket, we seem to be making one blunder after the other ,casting blame left , right and center.
Those who played pivotal roles in developing the monster are now dishonestly declaring that they do not know from whence it came!
Those who understand the historical journey of our people recognize that the problems are not of recent happenings .The truth is that the entire region has been on automatic pilot since the early sixties.
We refused to revolutionise our education system, buried agriculture, ignored our infrastructure and environment and created a large middle class that is essentially debt ridden while the traditional corporate class continues to pull the strings and direct economic development from the board room.
I know that there are many among us would claim that all of this is old rhetoric and no longer relevant to our “emerging” societies..However if they look at the major corporations , they would see that names have changed but players remain the same.
In every society we can point to a few who have made it but we never want to look at those who have fallen through the cracks and are rapidly becoming dangers to all who cross their path.
We lament the fact that most regional law enforcements agencies cannot keep up with the criminal element .However we will never admit that the educational model we continue to use is in some way responsible for the criminals we breed.
We watch our land disappear and tremendous strain being placed on our sewage disposal system.However we will never admit that when we abandoned agriculture that was the trade off for placing our economic fate in the hands of tourism.
In the mean time our roads, hospitals and schools continue to fall into disrepair because we have to feed the economic monster and keep the middle class happy.Therefore luxury cars costing, in some cases, a couple hundred thousand dollars, are traveling on roads inferior to those traveled on by donkey carts in the sixties.
Children go into schools today that are more unsanitary than those of forty years ago because we cannot maintain the buildings.
We need to have another rendevous with the passion that led us into independence and direct our energies toward a collective effort to once more take our destiny in our hands and treat our citizens with the respect their deserve.
We are in desperate need of leaders who can face the people themselves and not depend on American styled sound bites, political public relations and well trained political operatives to do their dirty work.
Our history teaches us that we were able to overcome slavery .A people that have overcome such a travesty must realize that they are capable of overcoming the socio economic problems which we now confront.
History is on our side.All hands on the Caribbean deck!!!!
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