Election Affairs ... You know it’s election time ... pt1



2010 and you know it’s election time in TnT when:

• Roads from Carenage and Cocorite flyover to Marabella Market suddenly get paved.

• And paving gets done along Claxton Bay Road at 9 pm on a Saturday night with ten Jusamco trucks of material.

• The words “party” and “seat” now apply respectively to the atmosphere at political gatherings and hotly contested locations rather than hot looking derrieres.

• Candidates clamour to be your new BFF (Best Friend Forever) on Facebook

• You remember 86 reasons­and counting­to steups and block everybody’s request.

• Babies have to duck. or request that politicians walk with hand sanitisers.

• Patrick Manning dons a flowered shirt (in Tabaquite) and Kamla Persad-Bissessar wears the pants (in UNC ).

• You can catch an Orange Sky performance, groove to Celine Dion or do the “Palance” and take in pan for free at the nearest political meeting.

• Baliser flowers and crapauds, rum and roti become scarce.

• All bets are off.

• Unsurprisingly, pensioners get “surprises” in their cheques, three weeks before polling day.

• That pothole in front your gate gets fixed four-and-a- half years after you complained about it.

• An 81-year-old launches the latest dance move.

• And Percy Villafana gives octogenerians everywhere new life by becoming a poster boy for gutsiness.

• Your MP suddenly appears. Along with his boss.

• Everybody’s walking and not just for the exercise or because their Jenny Craig diet can’t cut it.

• You get a “personal message from the office” of so-and-so to attend a meeting. When you get there you find out 10,000 other people also received the same invite.

• One party’s planning arsenal includes the “Art of War” and another tries taking cues from the script of “How To Train Your Dragon (Lady).”

• Penny(s) are seen as old political currency.

• Everyone wants to get to the Hart of the matter.

• The chips start falling­in May.

• Unity becomes vogue. Again.

• Diego Martin West becomes the most important seat to the PNM.

• Patrick Manning and Basdeo Panday start quoting each other.

• And each fervently hopes none of their grandchildren will ever have a name beginning with the letter “K.”

• The political cemetery loses a few corpses. And makes room for a whole lot more.

• Some nominees become losers even before they ever get a chance to contest.

• The Opposition takes aim at the three Cs: Crime, corruption and Calder.

• The Government returns fire with other Cs: Coalition collapse.

• Figures count and nobody’s talking about 36-24-36. Or the Trini equivalent of 42-28-46, give or take a couple inches.

• The voice of the people is the voice of (screening commitee) Board.

• COP starts working like ‘cops’.

• Everybody’s poll puts them ahead of the competition. Meanwhile, the lightpole on your street is still leaning after three months.

• You think twice about the colour jersey you want to wear (to go out.)

• You receive so many free party T-shirts, Rover gets his own (to sleep on)

• Promises abound more than the burnt grass on the slopes of the Northern Range.

• But no one promises to enforce laws to nail culprits who start bush fires.

• It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings and Marlene Mc Donald is still on stage.

• You realise just how much more power resides in your index finger when you use it on one particular­election­day as compared to the amount of power in your middle finger which you have to use several times a day.

courtesy Gail Alexander
Published: 4 May 2010, Trinidad Guardian
http://guardian.co.tt/news/general/2010/05/04/you-know-it-s-election-time



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