After decades of neglect and misrepresentation from administration after administration, the people of North Leeward reached a boiling point and exploded with discontent and resentment for politicians.
This was made manifest by the fact that many of them stayed away from the recent poll – refusing to vote for egotistical, vainglorious politicians. The people, often classified as backward, had had enough of the chicanery, and baseless promises made every 5 years, and said to the con-artist politician that the time was long overdue for them to make good on the promises.
Therefore, our so-called honorable politicians should know that the people in this part of the country are not as gullible as those of yesteryear. They have come of age and realize that politics is based on conflict of interest, deception, manipulation and wickedness unleashed by our ‘learned men’, to divide and rule the masses.
November 5, 2020 was testimony that the people of North Leeward are awakening and coming to their senses.
Seeing through the deception
Not so long ago I was in Chateaubeliar to visit a relative. That said day the ULP was having a meeting. I overheard two women saying they had ‘no time with politicians because all they are doing is dividing the people, setting then up to fight like cats and dogs. But after the election, the same politician – NDP and ULP – go back to knock glass’ together.’
As the songster said, ‘Who feels it knows it.’ You can ride and abuse a jackass but one day he would knock you off his back.
Politicians must know people won’t remain foolish all the days of their lives; that they will not tolerate their scheming and deceptive ways. People have the innate intelligence to know when they are ill-treated, used and abused by an oppressive regime.
The message that the people are sending is that they rather suffer than to support a fraudster politician – Yellow Party or the never ready Red Party – who doesn’t have their interest at heart.
In this part of the country, people are suffering and the politicians don’t seem give a damn about who lives or dies! High rate of unemployment leaves the greater proportion of youth idle, begging for alms; dilapidated and abandoned homes abound from Spring Village to Chateaubelair.
Worse, in North Leeward there isn’t any market for the struggling farmers of North Leeward. They toil from sunup to sundown and live from hand to mouth. If it wasn’t for ganja, it’s anybody’s guess how they would have survived. Luckily, some of these people have folks abroad to send remittances to them every mouth, and a barrel ever so often to help them out with their daily needs.
What the people need
What the people need is good representation. They don’t need politicians who bribe them every political end of term with a couple dollars and handouts; that is very degrading! What this shows is that politicians are perpetuating the same methods as the European en-slavers who saw black people as cheap commodities. In this age of enlightenment I expect better than that from our noble leaders.
What the people need are leaders: who can identify opportunities for jobs to lift them out of poverty; to show them alternatives, how to be better humans; who can guide them out of bondage and ignorance; to tell them they have wit and intelligent to achieve the things that seem impossible to reach.
What the people need are liberators to set them free from the baggage and hangovers of slavery.
As a student of the most honorable warrior Marcus Mosiah Garvey, it is humiliating and degrading to me that politicians are still using the same kind of bull-crap to seduce the people for their votes. This is not too far from a picture that the politicians are pimps and the people are hookers. God forbid, our people deserve better than that!
I reiterate, gone are the days when the people can be taken for granted. The people of North Leeward vented their frustration by staying away from the polling booths. These people who were called backward and ignorant finally realized those polling booths are death traps. They are waking up to realizing that politicians are rats! And yes, the people are finally realizing that, ‘A promise is a comfort to a fool.’
Carden A. Michael