By Raffique Shah
March 28, 2024

From agent RS07 SSA

Sire,

Further to our brief but focused discussion one year ago, held at your ultra secret chamber, whose location I cannot reveal even if I tried to, I submit my first annual report for the district where I live and where I have spent all my spying life: let’s call it CB07.

I kinda like this (07) number. It makes me feel something like being Bond, whose code number was 007 and who worked for Her Majesty, The Queen.

Lucky bastard he was, Bond had all the lovely women, he was full of vigour and youth, and he lived the good life. RS07 is a decrepit old bugger who suffers with Parkinson’s, who can hardly move around and certainly has no bevy of pretty girls around him.

Thanks to my wife, Rosina, I have at least one pretty old lady. I should remind you before I go any further, Boss07, that the salary you promised for the dangerous mission I must mount without help from any other useful agents (they all seem to me to be old and infirm, which does not paint a good picture) has not materialised. But hold on to it.

Now, about that report… Oh, by the way, I know that The Chief Rowley06 has settled for agent Spencer05 to head our company. I know him well. His father and I knew each other even better. I think he’ll be a good chief except for “the beak”.

His father, Julian, got that nickname because the feeling was, left on his own at any forum, he would talk, talk, talk. The son seems to be much wiser and with the experience he has, having served almost every agency in this country, we should do better having him on our side, Sire.

I know, I know, you think all these SSA men, women, pastors and goats are a pack of ——–, I almost crossed the threshold, but you know what, imagine hiring supposedly top agents by the church they attend… how stupid can we be?

In our case, you want me to furnish you with the persons, names included, who own oxen. There are so few of them and that information is so irrelevant. It tells the chief nothing new that will help him in elections.

The opposition parties no longer buy votes by bulls, they must furnish their key allies with luxury vehicles. So, I have nothing in that respect to report to you.

His party has been losing those seats in recent elections because of a simple but far-reaching decision by The EBC to create new parliamentary seats out of need for balance, I should add, not mischief. The EBC had no choice but to do what it did regarding boundaries.

In the old days before agencies like our SSA collected information that would benefit the ruling party, it would first hire smart people, then it would hire big names, like Ferdie Ferreira, Ivan Williams and Muriel Donawa, among others.

Party members who did the groundwork sift through the ­paperwork provided by the EBC and come up with answers.

The ruling and opposition parties in those days not only had such resourceful persons, but they got their services for free, and every time the party personnel would foretell the results in critical districts with great accuracy.

That was how the PNM went on to win election after election. The only reason the opposition parties didn’t was because they did not know or have the quality personnel tell them what was happening on the ground.

Today, any smart kid can sit in front of a computer, take the basic, important data that you need for giving you answers to questions like boundary shifts, etc, in short times.

You do not need to have pastors like the one we saw, boasting about his secret spying missions, embarrassing you, and worse, talking to the media, openly identifying himself as a spy while he doesn’t sound any smarter than a toddler learning the ABCs, no offence to toddlers out there.

I really hope, Sire, that all this BS that has been fed to us, the ­citizens, about these so-called spying and crime-detection agencies is not factual. If it is, then we are deeper in it than the proverbial K-K-diver who interestingly used to unearth some important data on residents as they went about their day.

But seriously, why do we continue with these highly paid, questionably qualified “spies”, when almost all the information we as citizens require to fight crime—or to win elections—can be had from smarter brains we can trust.

I, Sire, hereby disavow any connection with the agency you purported to represent.

In other words, Ah Gone!

Forget the payment you have for me.

Let my hands remain clean.