By Earl Bousquet

   By their words and actions, such persons and the parties that select or entertain them, including opportunist independents, deepen and widen the unfortunate impression held by too-many in too-many places, that all ‘Politics is bad.’ and ‘All politicians are corrupt.’

   Elections are around the corner in Guyana and Jamaica and on the cards in Barbados, Haiti, Saint Vincent & The Grenadines and Saint Lucia, following earlier polls this year in Belize, Trinidad & Tobago and Surinam -and in each case mentioned, usual suspects and obvious misfits on the hustings only to seemingly dance and prance, but further help give politics the ‘Bad Name’ it still enjoys.

   Parents continue to dissuade their children from even mentioning politics and youth are still generally suspicious of the politics and politicians they grew-up with -and with (bad) reason. 

   It’s not uncommon for senior Public Servants with eyes and minds on partisan politics to play possum for years, measuring the electoral value of their advice to ministers before eventually unveiling their hidden intent by launching bids for candidacy for upcoming elections.

   For years, some will work in national, regional or international positions that help determine and implement state policy, knowing they intend to offer themselves for political office and masking their partisan political intentions by striving to appear to be ‘playing-it-safe’.

   Others openly violate their terms of employment to invite appropriate corrective actions they can then sell as ‘political victimization’.  

   The usual partisan political suspects simply sign-up for the race to a finishing-line that rewards speed over endurance and lowers political standards to underground levels.

   Corruption charges simply follow some candidates in and out of office, only to disappear thanks to regime change in two-party states -in the middle of high expectations that a neutral justice system will follow the smoke to find and extinguish fires.

  It’s not unusual for governments to mount inquiries or investigations of corruption under public pressure, even appointing Special Prosecutors, only to see a repeat of the traditional ineffectiveness of Integrity Commissions that somehow never question politicians whose wealth visibly outpaces their legal earnings.

   It’s so-bad that candidates who’ve spent entire political careers dogged by (yet-to-be-proven) corruption allegations to later actually boast that if they were guilty as charged, they would have been in prison.

   So-good some are at distinguishing between tax ‘evasion’ and tax ‘avoidance’ that they apply the same loophole principle to everything they do in brazen selfish pursuit of political office -and power.

   Today, opposition candidates with no reason to even dream of victory feel free to exercise their right to make fools of themselves publicly, doing and saying the worst they to deflect from pressing national issues, insulting Government and ruling-party leaders and resorting to the most verbose use of IT to knowingly misinform and mislead.

   With elections on the horizon, the usual suspects are also crawling-out quickly from the woodworks, with announcements of new parties never launched and promising invisible candidates.

   A New World Order is taking shape with a US President who’s shaken every corner of the world in just seven months in office and whose Caribbean policies, while still unfolding, have already indicated they’re not at all in the best interests of Caribbean nations.

   In his quest to win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize in December, President Donald Trump is playing Snakes and Ladders, Draughts and Checkers with Ukraine and Israel, his tariffs reiterating Washington’s eternal policy of having ‘no friends, only interests…’

Europe’s development is slowing-down while Beijing and Moscow continue playing Chinese Checkers with their foes and BRICS nations continue to outweigh the G-7 in everything from size and population to global economic might and lessening dependence on US currency for world trade.

   Big Oil in the US, UK, Canada, France and The Netherlands have lined-up to take early control of new and lucrative energy fields in Guyana, Surinam and Trinidad & Tobago, while Grenada is looking to Africa for energy and economic partnerships and the US continues playing Cat-and-Mouse with Venezuela over Washington’s treatment of Venezuelans being arrested and deported without trial and Chevron’s return to Caracas -this time as a new stakeholder in Guyana, while Exxon-Mobil also expands its footprints to Trinidad & Tobago.

   In the meantime, Saint Lucia’s opposition leaders and candidates are dabbling in superstition, accusing the ruling party of using ‘Black Magic’, including devilish midgets (‘Boloms’) delivered by Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu during his recent seven-day state visit and holiday, when bilateral and multilateral cooperation agreements and memoranda were signed between Nigeria and OECS member-states.

   Of course, Caribbean nations, citizens and voters continue to deserve more than is being offered even today by traditional Social Democratic parties that helped the imperial West fight Fascism during World War II and after West Indian colonies became independent in the period between the 1960s and Grenada Revolution in 1983 and after the kidnap and involuntary exile to South Africa of Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004.   

   But while progress is still being achieved at the level of improving regional politics, whenever elections approach all politics is treated like local (like everywhere else) and political.

   Likewise, tricksters out to thrive on traditional ‘politricks’ continue trying to blind regional electorates -only to find that climate change also affects Caribbean politics and voters are much-more conscious today than ever, of Who-is-Who and Which candidates can deliver What, in this Day and Age when people no longer listen only to selected political platforms when elections get closer. 

   However, given what’s coming out of the mouths of candidates with nothing to offer, there’s still much reason for hope that Caribbean voters will continue demonstrating their better understanding of today’s meanings of the old proverb: ‘Those the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad!’