Half Trump, half Elvis – Ralph Gonsalves’ winning combination

EDITOR: Prime Minister Gonsalves seems half Donald Trump and half Elvis, and that will be his winning combination for re-election. He is mythic, populist, and charismatic, and his supporters are often composed of those who unthinkingly, unquestioningly, worship and idolize him, plus those others who say, “Thanks to the Comrade, we got ours (i.e. jobs, favours, patronage, handouts, etc) and thanks to him ‘we own the Government and own the jobs’, but the only way we are going to keep it is to win the next election.{{more}}ULP loses, I lose. I don’t know what a ‘policy’ is, or ‘long-term debt obligations’ or ‘questionable foreign entanglements’, and I don’t care – keep the foreigners out (“Gara-whatever you call them”), sell whoever wants to buy a passport one, if they are willing to pay enough, but most of all, KEEP GIVING ME WHAT I’VE BEEN GETTING.”

If there is enough of each of the above, those entrenched and those indebted, Gonsalves wins. It is that simple. Then, the larger population, the citizenry, the nation as a whole (and your children’s future), will all be the losers.

Of course, one of the essential aspects of the problem is that the informed and educated middle class is itself shrinking, through impoverishment or emigration, while idolaters and sycophants proliferate.

You can take and pass several CXC/CSEC tests, without taking any English or Math. You can’t get a job, or enroll in college, but you pass tests, which allows the Government to take credit for a boost to its “Education Revolution”. You can’t spell or write or speak real English, or do simple math, but you passed some CSEC exams! When you are of age you are qualified to vote. Congratulations. You have won the right to join a growing segment of our society: unemployed, hopeless and incompetent, looking to the Government for a handout – the makings of a ULP

supporter!

I live in a community where a single dog bark incites all the neighbours’ dogs to bark. That one dog may or may not have seen or heard something to incite his barking. The other dogs have mindlessly, without independent cause, taken up the cry. When the dog that arouses the cry ceases, they all turn silent. It sounds like a ULP neighborhood.

HJA