It seems for­mer Point Fortin may­or Ab­don Ma­son has joined those de­fend­ing the ho­n­our of our un­of­fi­cial na­tion­al dish—dou­bles—which Ja­maican dance­hall singer Bee­nie Man says not even stray dogs would eat. Well, Bee­nie prob­a­bly re­mem­bers when our chief cit­i­zen, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, said there was noth­ing spe­cial about dou­bles.

How­ev­er, the singer’s com­ments did not dis­turb me as much as the In­sta­gram com­ments from his fel­low Ja­maican, busi­ness and fi­nance jour­nal­ist Kalilah Reynolds, who five days ago spoke on Ja­maica’s Petro­jam now ex­port­ing 1 mil­lion bar­rels of fu­el oil to T&T.

She ex­pressed glee­ful sur­prise that Ja­maica, which doesn’t pro­duce oil, is now sup­ply­ing T&T. She men­tions the known com­pe­ti­tion be­tween our na­tions and mar­velled at the change of cir­cum­stances. She spoke on our Forex is­sues and the re­ver­sal of our for­tunes, since the clo­sure of Petrotrin, and the last ten years of our eco­nom­ic de­cline while Ja­maica has been im­prov­ing. She men­tioned the op­tics of this pow­er shift.

Nine years ago, when 12 Ja­maicans were de­nied en­try to our coun­try and de­tained in “less than ac­cept­able cir­cum­stances,” Caribbean Jour­nal con­trib­u­tor Den­nis Chung wrote on The Ja­maica-Trinidad Re­la­tion­ship. He men­tioned that “the ten­sion be­gan in 1961, when Ja­maica held a ref­er­en­dum which saw us with­draw­ing from the West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion. At that time, Trinidad Prime Min­ster Dr Er­ic Williams said that “one from ten leaves ze­ro,” re­fer­ring to the fact that with­out Ja­maica, the Fed­er­a­tion would be vir­tu­al­ly non-ex­is­tent. Since then, we have been un­able to see the free move­ment of goods and peo­ple with­in the re­gion.”

Chung men­tions that the fail­ure of our gov­ern­ments to rec­ti­fy this sit­u­a­tion re­flects a se­ri­ous lack of lead­er­ship in the re­gion. He wrote, “I am left to won­der why we are un­able to re­solve a mat­ter as im­por­tant as this, yet we find time to prof­fer so­lu­tions to prob­lems af­fect­ing West In­dies crick­et, but such is the irony of our re­gion­al pol­i­tics.”

Econ­o­mist In­dera Sage­wan men­tioned that she nev­er thought she would see the day when T&T would be buy­ing fu­el from Ja­maica.

“One would have thought that those who gov­ern us would be for­ward-think­ing enough to find bet­ter so­lu­tions,” she said.

So, want­i­ng lead­er­ship may be re­spon­si­ble for our fad­ed glo­ry. At one time, we were one of the proud­est peo­ple in the Caribbean, be­ing one of the ma­jor fu­el sup­pli­ers to the Cari­com re­gion. This re­gion­al em­bar­rass­ment must be tied to those who ap­point­ed per­sons who mis­man­aged and put Petrotrin in bil­lions of debt.

Our safe­ty net and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty were dec­i­mat­ed via poor man­agers, the world mar­ket, and the fail­ure of those who gov­ern us to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my. We still re­main a coun­try with huge po­ten­tial, but I won­der if we are locked in a lim­bo of medi­oc­rity, with par­ti­san pol­i­tics al­low­ing the same in­ept per­sons ap­point­ed on state boards that fell short, to be put on oth­er boards to serve. Un­der­stand­ably, Gov­ern­ment has to put per­sons who will seek to ac­tu­alise its agen­da, but af­ter one or two years in of­fice, if the an­nu­al re­port shows short­com­ings, then they should be re­moved. This is what hap­pens in pri­vate com­pa­nies.

One won­ders if per­sons are ap­point­ed to push par­a­sitic agen­das, where loss­es to state en­ter­pris­es are wil­ful­ly en­cour­aged so some hid­den play­ers can get fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits. De­lib­er­ate mis­man­age­ment. Sure­ly, we can’t be that un­lucky to have im­be­ciles con­tin­u­al­ly run down our en­ter­pris­es. We had enough lessons to be learned on man­ag­ing our oil booms and de­clines. We have been in the oil busi­ness since 1857. Nepo­tis­tic hir­ing cul­ture has con­tributed to our na­tion’s present fis­cal dis­tress, in­creas­ing the hard­ship of cit­i­zens and erod­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence.

Poor lead­er­ship de­ci­sions are al­so seen in our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty de­ba­cle. Hansard records would show that this Gov­ern­ment gave two ex­ten­sions to CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher af­ter she reached re­tire­ment age. It was this Gov­ern­ment that vot­ed for Gary Grif­fith as CoP and lat­er stymied his reap­point­ment via the in­fa­mous ‘se­cret meet­ing’.

The now-de­monised SSA head was ap­point­ed by Cab­i­net on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. Ma­jor Roger Best was ap­point­ed in 2019 when the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment was four years old.

Cit­i­zens may now be scep­ti­cal about any rec­om­men­da­tion or ap­point­ment made by our lead­ers. How are we to de­ter­mine if these per­sons are in­deed fit for of­fice or some­times, if they do not do the bid­ding of their mas­ters, they are re­moved and the pop­u­la­tion ob­fus­cat­ed by a smoke and mir­ror Nan­cy sto­ry?

As the coun­try grap­ples with these is­sues, some are left won­der­ing if our once-vi­brant econ­o­my and glo­ry can ever re­cov­er.