By Raffique Shah
April 11, 2022
“Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said¸
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf, all in self,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And doubly dying, shall go down,
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d and unsung.”
—Sir Walter Scott (1771—1832)
Rarely do I use poetry in my prose, and rarer still my use of such an extensive quote to open my column. However, as I pondered the issue I want to address, and to bring it to life quite differently to readers and, hopefully, more readers and leaders in the society, those considerations guided me to one of Scotland’s great men of letters, Sir Walter Scott. He succinctly summed up the depths to which many leaders and their vocal supporters descend into and the ostracism they deserve for such sins.
Continue reading Creating a failed state →
It was November 2016; the PNM had just won an election, and it was riding high. At a conference hosted by the Government and the International Monetary Fund, Finance Minister Colm Imbert explained why he had raised the price of fuel. He boasted: “I increased the price of fuel by 15% and then realised that was not enough. I came back again in April and raised it by another 15% and I came back again just a few weeks ago and raised it by another 15%. They haven’t rioted yet.” (Loop News, November 9, 2016.)