Since February 2022, Russia has been carrying out heavy military attacks on neighbouring Ukraine. To this day, the death and destruction has not stopped, even as Ukraine struggles to defend itself and is now virtually begging the US and Western European countries for defence artillery.

And even while Russia continues its military devastation of death and destruction of a much smaller country, we are witnessing an apparent cold acceptance by Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arabs Emirates (countries that supposedly advocate peace and are classified as democracies, with the exception of China, of course) of communist Russia’s solid membership in the economic/financial bloc BRICS.

Not very far (by global yardsticks) from Ukraine, there’s another centuries-old conflict. It escalated on October 7, 2023, when one side carried out an armed attack and the kidnapping of men, women and children, and the other responded with full force. Since then, both sides have lost thousands of lives.

We in Trinidad and Tobago have three major religious groups, one of which is closely associated with the principal religion of the Middle East, and whose members recently celebrated their most treasured religious occasion. Each of our religious groups has enormous numbers of followers who can persuade the results of a general election. Thus, it was not surprising to hear both our red and yellow politicians grabbing at the opportunity on this specific religious occasion to say how much they cared about what happens in that Middle East conflict.

If you are in positions of authority or if you are desperately seeking to replace those in those said positions, does conveniently expressing significance for some lives actually work?

In the more than two years of Russia’s non-stop, deadly attacks on a country 28 times smaller than itself and with just a fraction of a percentage of its military might, how many of T&T’s 41 sitting parliamentarians have openly and/or assertively voiced their opinion on Russia’s action as they are now doing with their blatant, two-faced declarations on the Middle East discord?

And if you look at these two parties purely from a political perspective, it is clear that they are both ethnic-dominated. At present one is struggling to educate and uplift its young people and get them away from crime-related activities, while the top hierarchy of the other is bitterly fighting among themselves for leadership of their party, but diverting their wide membership’s issues, giving their diehards the impression that their main political opponent is to blame for everything, including their vicious internal hostility.

For the past three to four decades, our murder toll has been in the hundreds each year. And if they (the red and yellow politicians) can’t or won’t collaborate to get a grip on our small country’s murderous situation, isn’t it comical that they are now mutually appealing to those involved in an international situation?

Do they really care about what happens in the Israel/Gaza conflict, or is the 2025 general election heavily on their minds? Or are they very conscious that a number of potential voters may be supporting a particular side in that conflict, hence they put on their camouflaged, concerned masks and appeal for one side to withdraw?

Politics is indeed a deceitful game.

Lloyd Ragoo Chaguanas