IN a country with so much potential, I used to wonder how come we are heading to hell in a hand basket. We possess diligent, honest people, boundless diverse natural resources, blessed with cultures any other nation would envy. So where have we gone wrong?

The simple reality is that we have sold our integrity for comfort. We have been led so far down a rabbit hole that really we will not be able to recover any time soon.

This month of local pride does not beam with the same virility as the past years. I am not the only one who looked at the wolfish face of the lady in red as she waved, white teeth sneering at the sweaty citizens trying to evoke some national pride. This woman is the epitome of everything that is wrong in our country.

Now don’t get me wrong, on paper her election is valid. However, even after carrying the cloaked balisier in her bosom and knowing the reptilian legacy it contains she accepted the position with a speech as empty as her promises.

The falling dullness that is now our national patrimony is another step in accepting our nation losing its way into becoming a draconian state. Now those who fall in line with this patronage are free to do whatever they want to any extent without redress or accountability.

Look at the courts, look at the ministers! Those who seek advancement or justice must now fiddle their bow and hum their tune. How many of us are facing an uphill battle for justice in a system abused by those in charge. How many of us are left stunned by the open disregard for integrity in courts and other services by those who do nothing to ensure the maintenance of said integrity. Yet these enablers will look at you and tell you they somehow deserve to be respected because of their positions! I muse, many of them who hold high positions now were given such, not because of their ability to function effectively, but to obey the barks of their master! The sentiments of that lady from Tobago still ring true, ‘We in charge now deal with it!’ Corruption is not an act of a singular entity, but a network. Our people are being fed a poisonous fodder that has debilitated our reasoning. We are overworked and too exhausted to realise what is happening to us. Those who are mandated to protect us from these evils are so compromised or so out that they don’t even know right from wrong!

How many of us are suffering only because no one wants to do the right thing and those in power allow such abuses to fester, destroying our ability to fight? The bigger question is how long are we going to allow this to continue and when are we going to recognise the stench that is emitting from the fish head.

Ryan Martinez Gasparillo