MISmanaGEmenT 101

I read something in the Trinidad and Tobago newspapers today: the government there is renting a 12 -year-old blimp, in use as a "crimefighting eye-in-the-sky" at a cost of US $100,000 per month. Old equipment, of dubious use, being secured at an astronomical sum. Smacks of old-school corruption, doesn't it? This one example speaks to the freakish, sad slide of the twin-island republic, from paradise to paradise lost. The year is barely two months old, yet over 55 people have been brutally murdered, victims of a crime wave of phenomenal proportions that the government appears unable (unwilling?) to staunch. Drug gangs play out brazen gun battles in the streets of the capital city. Professional kidnappers pro-rate ransoms in a wide-ranging, lucrative kidnapping epidemic. Police assault citizens and each other- it is whispered that the cops benefit from the kidnapping trade, and it is a fact that no one has as yet been charged with the offence, although there have been at least 200 of these crimes committed within the last 2 years. People with money have beefed up security for themselves, and of course the Prime Minister travels with two Jeeploads of officers from the elite "Guard & Emergency Branch",(the Trini version of SWAT), so one wouldn't be untoward in thinking that there wasn't quite the sense of urgency with regard to this problem in that corner. Yet last week, the Prime Minister and his woefully underperforming cabinet went to Parliament for a raise in pay. And they'll probably get it, for the sad fact is, once the vote has been cast, the people no longer hold any sawy. The cronyism and elitism that have been the stalwart holdouts of a colonial culture then come to the fore, and those in power happily do as they please.
It completely sickens me... public servants with no idea of what public service is. And the poor and working class suffer the consequences, from the higher costs passed on by merchants forced to more strenously defend their persons and wares, to the bullets that are now a fact of life on these tropical isles.
It is even more affecting that I now see George Bush, with his wiretaps and so on, acting in much the same way as these petty all-but-dictators I had thought to escape.
The world is indeed getting smaller.