Dear Editor,
Please allow me some space in your newspaper to address ex-Minister Maurice Lake.
Ex-Minister Lake I read with interest your letter two days ago relative to the traffic, and now again yesterday about any number of things – lots of ideas, lots of suggestions. Some good and some, in my opinion, less so, but they are not why I am writing you.
I am more than a little confused as to why you now seem to think that “Letters to the Editor” are how governments solve problems. These pages already have lots of permanent “informal advisors” to government. Russel Simmons, Elton Jones and god knows how many others seem to endlessly have something to say on every conceivable problem that plagues this tiny island. They complain long and endlessly because they are under the misguided assumption that if they complain long and loud enough something will change.
Unfortunately, the universal truth is that complaining in the newspaper changes nothing because those capable of implementing any meaningful change act only in their own best interests and, in the end, don’t care at all what gets printed in the paper. I could give you a hundred examples but you know exactly what I am talking about. What confuses me is that you were ostensibly one of these individuals that could implement change; a duly elected minister – an integral part of the government that defines what happens.
Yet here you are complaining in a public forum instead of actually having done something about it within the government you represented when you had actually had the chance. You were supposed to have the power. People voted for you because you said “I’m the guy. Elect me and I can fix things.” Really?
GEBE is still stealing my electricity for more than a year now. I produce it at my own expense and they steal it and resell it. A year ago you told Ricardo that you had a handle on this. You published more letters about it. You said you had policies drawn up ready to implement. You said lots of things on the subject and yet here we are: nothing done, nothing accomplished. GEBE is still stealing with impunity.
I am an engineer by trade and that occupation has a very simple credo: “Just saying you can do something is not the same as actually doing it.” Politicians live by a different credo: “Never say anything that sounds like a commitment that you can be held accountable for later, and never do anything that someone doesn't pay you to do.”
In the words of another famous letter writer whose name escapes me at the moment, here is some unpaid advice. Stop flapping your gums. Stop publishing letters with grand ideas and suggestions and instead get off your butt and try to make any of it actually happen. Start with a solar policy that stops GEBE’s criminal conduct. Do something real. Call up your cronies and make something actually happen. Haul someone into court. That’s what you were getting paid for. Not for writing letters. That is way too little and very, very much too late.
Steven Johnson
