A powerful wish for 2025

It may be January 12, but there’s no harm in making or renewing a wish for this bold new year we are embarking upon –not an empty wish such as “I wish I’d been born on Mars,” which is a hopeless wish.

The act of wishing may appear flaky, but it is an expression of hope, and it should not be an idle one. Wishing can propel us forward.

Hope is an essential element of human existence. It actually acknowledges a roadblock and the need to overcome it. Moving from hoping to seeing how we can realise the vision of surmounting difficulty is what we need to focus on. Not letting life live you but you living it, as the mantra goes; not bowing to what might seem our destiny but believing we can shape our world and not relying on others to do so for us, as President Obama might have recommended.

Now, more than ever, we need hope, because it could help us contain the growing fear arising from the many and varied uncertainties around us, uncontrollable developments which are threatening in word and nature.

Starting at home, the Prime Minister, announced his resignation in advance of the 2025 general election and last week used an unorthodox manner of arriving at his successor as PM.

Members of the PNM itself, those outside the PM’s inner circle, have been openly critical of Dr Rowley’s method of having serving parliamentarians vote for that person. It has shaken people’s trust. since, although the rules of the party have not been broken, this way of doing things is unprecedented.

The fact that the vote between the two candidates who put themselves forward was almost an equal split introduces a possible element of friction.

However, the ruling party is mature and well organised and will know how to overcome that, plus the process is not yet complete as the new leader of the party is still to be determined.

But this is happening against the backdrop of a limited state of emergency and the fear that the country cannot withstand the high levels of crime and is not being well governed. Will the next PM, from whichever party wins the election, have the will and ability to deal with crime when people no longer trust politicians and consider them part of the problem?

It is clear that world leaders, from China and Canada, to Russia and all of Europe, are easing conventions, if not exactly breaking the rules, to achieve what might be personal or narrow, even contentious aims. And who can blame them when politics is the art of the possible and we are now in the age of pragmatism? The idealism of the post war period is slowly dying.

Change does not happen in a vacuum, and the person setting the course for political unorthodoxy is President-elect Trump, who will soon take office in Washington. He has contested elections, committed crimes, caused an insurrection, constantly lies, is narcissistic, denies global warming, and yet he prevails. It tells us something about where we are in the development of human society and people’s disillusionment with the status quo.

Naipaul’s “mimic men” might apply to many politicians worldwide who seem to draw succour from Trump’s evident success with being disruptive and the eager support for his stated desire to smash conventions and rules and change the way the US is governed.

As president, Trump promises to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, start a trade war with the US’s biggest partners, wreck long-standing global alliances and international institutions and to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal, by force if necessary. He knows the age of America is ebbing, and great empires and institutions wane and die only when they are weak, despite the show of force. The question is, will the centre withstand his onslaught to make America great again?

Onlookers cannot be certain whether Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk and those behind them understand the real implications of his stated actions, but we know they do not care. It is making everyone worldwide sit up and take stock, because we will all be collateral damage.

TT faces a difficult economic and social future. We are not fit for purpose, not for the 21st century and its challenges.

We need leaders who can shape the future, dare to be unconventional and have the guts for positively transforming the bureaucracy, society and economy. Great leaders make things happen and we must hope for one with integrity, vision and skill, no matter their ethnicity.

Contested histories: This column of December 29, 2024 was contested by a Salandy heritage researcher.

According to other accounts, the name “Sarlandie” did not originate in Corsica, as per the source used. Fedon, Sarlandie and other Grenadian French families originated in the Aquitaine region of France.

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