What was this Government’s intention when it tried to foist its choice of directors to the board of OCM?

Is it that what many people are saying is true? That this government, being in power for what, almost ten years, just doesn’t care about the optics, doesn’t care about “how it go look,” and is intent is getting its way come hell or high water.

Did no one advise Messrs Imbert and Manning that attempting to put Government’s people on the board of a private media conglomerate would have, in the eyes of ordinary citizens, looked as if this was an attempt to push the State’s agenda on the media?

In this modern world, sometimes it’s not only about intent – however noble and altruistic this may be – it’s about optics.

Public perception plays a major role in making or breaking a person or an organisation…or a government. This administration must know this fact. So from where I sit, it means this government just does not care one hoot about public perception. It saw an avenue to put its people on the board of a private media organisation and tried to have its way.

This is not the first time this particular government has shown it cares not what the public thinks of it.

In this protracted guava season, when even that basic human necessity of water in your pipe is not guaranteed, where a dollar no longer stretches and going to the grocery is enough to leave your wallet empty, this government is bulldozing the property tax on us.

In this age of murder and mayhem, when you kiss your loved ones and leave home to go to school, or work or the parlour, you are not guaranteed to return home alive, this government is pushing a video contest as its latest crime-fighting initiative, ignorant or impervious to the fact that this seems a resounding slap to the face of every law-abiding citizen who remain prisoners to criminals.

This weekend gone, there were 14 murders. Yet the government wants young people to make videos about not committing crime. Really?

This is the age where you must bow to the balisier and automatically cheer for the PNM, and if you don’t, you are branded a recalcitrant and unpatriotic person. Do you see what I mean? The government is clearly blind to the optics of its actions and inactions.

I don’t know the two men Government was trying to put on the board of OCM. They may very well have had the noblest of intentions.

But in any democracy, it is common knowledge that it is an ill wind that blows from any alliance between the State and the media – a wind that if left unchecked, can develop into a gale force twister that would have made Hurricane Beryl blush.

From where I sit, I am grateful our media remains a free one, notwithstanding its many flaws and imperfections. For if this were not so, chances are, I would be wasting my time putting pen to paper and writing letters to the editor.

LEE MERRICK

San Fernando