Truth, I-Blog

Dear Prime Minister, It was so good, and pleasant, to watch your Conversation with the public at Exodus panyard, last week. At ease you were. As I know you usually are, and have been, at panyards that you have visited long before you took on the mantle of Prime Minister. And while for some it is simply an informal space to free up, for many of us it is a sacred place where no man is better than the other. Bob Marley described one love ultimately as the space where we get together and feel alright. And that's not because of drink sharing. One Love is the steelband culture. And, I will point you to the last Psalm in the Bible, Psalm 150, which describes worship of the highest order. For many of us it is also where our children get to practise discipline, tolerance and production which become ingrained in their DNA. Indeed, it is the single largest cultural movement in the Caribbean. Oh well, there are far more important matters than what I have written in these opening paragraph...

Dennis Phillip (at right). No one had to dare him to speak publicly, for the records. It was about time. And that was evident in his tone which was strident but respectful, as is the nature of the man who was part of the team that built the structure for all the financial benefits that accrue to steelbands competing for Panorama, at least. Ironically, for the post Covid Panorama (the Jubilee year, no less) his band was starved of funds. For starters, Birdsong Steelband (Academy and Social Enterprises), born out of the University of the West Indies, has been denied access to TT$60,000, which Dennis Phillip (a founding member) says is owed from the 2022 Taste of Carnival. Indeed it was a bitter taste for the band that did not "qualify" for a place on the stage at the Queen's Park Savannah, as Pan Trinbago’s President Beverley Ramsey Moore arbitrarily ruled their exclusion on the grounds that they did not play a bomb tune. “She deemed Andre Tanker’s Forward Home as a calypso...

There was a sense of purpose, when decades ago, he declared his mission in the name he chose. Almost always with a serious expression, but with the ability to make you laugh at yourself anytime, he said his duty is to be, for Trinidad and Tobago, the Watchman: “to look out for people, to warn people and to stop people from doing wrong.” Wayne Hayde (Gary Cardinez Photo) Is he still too serious for them? When the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) Headquarters was car bombed in the 1990 attempted coup and police men were utterly demoralised, as a police constable he was among  a small group that led from the ground and from the ashes came the Police Second Division Social and Welfare Association that successfully bargained for resources and respect. The homegrown, incorruptible, police officer‘s decades of experience in international conflict zones-in a non-military capacity- in Africa, the Middle East and Asia has groomed him for the job at hand. He sees the challenge as br...