Morris Cargill

WELL! WELL! Well! The Government seems to have been awakened from its sleep, by only one mild protest by the Citizens For Civil Society, and the prospect of a march. This has so agitated the pachydermatousPickersgill that he is now hallucinating about all sorts of sinister plots and motives. He has branded the CCS as being "power hungry", "partisan power seekers".

I should have thought that by now it would be clear that the CCS has no political aims other than to stimulate the Government into doing something effective, concerning the sorry state into which the country has fallen. Were it otherwise, I would not have lent my name to it. The good Mr. P questions why the CCS, while seeking the resignations of two PNP Ministers and Eddie Seaga have not suggested that Bruce Golding should resign too. How could the good Mr. Golding resign when he has nothing to resign from, except a sort of paper party.

Pickersgill has also asked, how the CCS could guarantee that it would not be infiltrated by criminal elements. The straight answer to this is that it can't. Partly due to misgovernment and the failure to get on top of crime, "criminal elements" proliferate and have even infiltrated the Government itself, especially during elections.

I have a rather droll idea. If the Government is nervous about the very modest marches, which have been permitted, why not arrange for the police to march along with the marchers? I am sure that they would enjoy doing this, for they too suffer many things about which they would like to make a mild protest. The spectacle of the supporters of the CCS marching hand-in-hand with the police would be very reassuring, and would probably give Commissioner Forbes a small attack of acid indigestion which would not be a bad thing.

There are a good many people in the PNP who are well aware that there are solid reasons for public discontent. It would be wrong of me to set out a list of them, but at the risk of seeming to make invidious comparisons, take Ronny Thwaites. I cannot think of any subject, from politics to religion, upon which we ever agreed, but he is an open-minded and charming man, and I am sure that he pays attention to the widespread discontent which now prevails. And then there is Phillip Paulwell.

He's been doing a good job recently, even though in his joust with Cable and Wireless he seems to have suffered a broken lance. He was not however unhorsed. He inherited a sticky situation, difficult for our worthy knight in shining armour to disentangle. One is tempted to misuse a well known old couplet:

"When Bobby delved and Mayer span.

Who was then the gentleman?"

And then of course there is the pretty Portia who never fails to behave like a lady.

It would be nice, when it comes to dealing with the PNP, if we could deal with people like those. May be the little scare that the CCS has created will succeed in bringing the wiser ones in the PNP to the fore, and a retreat into the background of all the old dunderheads and political hacks who have no understanding of present realities.

Incidentally, it seems that a few of these, having crawled out from the mothballs, have managed to extract all the teeth of what is known as the Anti-Corruption Bill. I am not surprised, for none of them would like to be bitten.

Seatbelts

I think that everyone in cars should use seatbelts. However, I think that enforcing the use of seatbelts in taxis is quite impractical. If the government wants to enforce the use of seatbelts in taxis, then why does it not try to enforce the use of seatbelts in buses? That too would be totally impractical.

It is typical of our Government that when it decides to do anything at all, it rushes into it without properly planning or thinking through its action. I think the idea of seatbelts in taxis should be abandoned.

I understand that the taxi drivers were planning a protest too, which also put the wind up the Government. Here again I gather that the Government was planning to use force against the taxi drivers. It would be better if the Government calmed down and listened carefully to the objections of the taxi drivers, for they have a good case. And of other protesters too.