Success can be ugly

When the heavy torrents of the Christmas 2013 rain drenched the land, drowned the rivers, downed trees, bridges, poles and water lines, uprooted soil, hillsides and roads, it shocked our people and nation to the core. When homes migrated or were smashed up, persons met terror face to face, loved ones clung to hope, helpless to help as beloveds waved pleading hands or were never found again; a dead dread stalked our land – six months ago. It lingers on, though we are rising still and trying to put it aside.{{more}}

Today, a more sinister dread is chiming in our ears. A song of success, a psalm of restoration, of mattresses and houses, preparing for a socalypso of triumphal reconstruction. The sorrow will soon be over, a new Christmas season is here, of 100 homes, of roads and bridges, and gladness. What could be better! Thank God for the Government and NEMO. Yet, such a reconstruction is as ugly as sin dressed in white garments. What is the ugliness that we see?

UPRISING OF SOLIDARITY CRUSHED

The opportunity was deliberately rejected. This is my chance to do my thing in my style, to gain maximum benefit for my side. The dreadness of the Christmas was to be governed, managed, monitored and evaluated under the monopoly power of the Government, mainly the Minister of Finance, in collaboration with the Minister of Works etc. There is nothing pretty about such an arrangement, and when it boasts of success and notable outputs, close scrutiny reveals unmitigated ugliness and gross indecency.

SUCCESSFUL AND IGNOBLE

What strategic information do citizens have so we can say that the home building projects are successful? Is it the praises of the persons who receive the keys that say “Yes, great job done…? Certainly, the response of the affected people is a measure of satisfaction, but do we recall that these houses, built at a cost of $60,000, were once announced to have been estimated at a unit cost of $300,000, with proceeds from overseas financing? When we have such deep cuts in costs/estimates in an operation that should have been an open house of information, but isn’t, it is hard to applaud wholeheartedly. You hold back the praise. We just don’t have the data to be able to give a true judgment.

To tell the truth, providing the families of the Christmas storm with houses is a noble deed, but a noble deed can be performed ignobly, in insulting fashion and for ulterior motives. In the same way that a “whited sepulchre” is an attractive structure that encloses indelicate items, so a home grant handed out on a “one size fits all” basis, can be part of a crippling, patron-client, ‘masa house slave’ political conditioning in many cases. I was pleased to hear one “client” say: “My bed has worm tunnels in it, but I go keep it, till I can do better”. That is the spirit of the decent citizen we should “patternise.”

In ignorance, we can often call a success, what is truly a social and moral disaster. In ignorance, we may donate items which end up where we never intended them to reach. In ignorance, we may very well stand up and praise an uplifted output or declaration which has an ugly moral intent. That is why when the government chose to monopolize the governing of the Christmas disaster, guaranteeing our ignorance, we know their successes are ugly, deliberately divisive, dreader than the dreadness of the storm, because unlike the storm, the damage cannot readily be assessed.

In today’s SVG, let us not give praise where cloudiness surrounds the cause. And in tomorrow’s SVG, make governance information a right we enjoy.