Politricking activism

If you know me, you know that I am vociferous in my opinions on social issues but not much of a politics fans. Chef Boyardee calls me an activist. Bleh.

Anyhoo, this activist was feeling very ambivalent about voting in this month's election. By ambivalent I mean I wasn't going to vote. At all. I was going to pretend that there was no election and go to the spa, since the actual wedding date is mere days away from the election date. My priorities were set; wedding before government. One is 'till death do us part; the other, 'till I feel to call chaos into yuh life so I could haul my cheatin' *%#@ from yuh parliament.

Sigh. Until Minister Neil Parsanlal decided to do a walkabout in hi constituency. My constituency. Now, Neil did a pretty ok job. He was very visible over the last two years, did what he said he would do etc etc. My mother likes Neil a lot. So much so that on his walkabout last time she went outside to tell him that. THIS time she suggested I go with her, since I had a little bit of a beef with Neil's reaction to media after Patos went and buff up the radio announcers in Boom. The radio announcers was wrong, and he was wronger to walk in there and deal with it personally. Neil was wronger still to go and blaze media people, I felt, and his government had done nothing to help media training so they doh make silly mistakes like that.

So I goes out there, reluctantly, and says Neil boy I have a bone to pick with you. And he says, A bone to pick with me? Now let me hear about this bone. I explains the bone to him and he tells me my premise is wrong. You see, I believed that the government, instead of media bashing, should push for more media training. The misrepresentation, misquoting, no knowing how to ask a simple question, bashing of PMs during the news cast ... I believe all this could be avoided through training.

I don't know if Neil believes that. But he did say that he has tried to give the 'relevant bodies' all the information they need to push media training. But the government cannot be seen to be 'buying the media' so he cannot, as Information Minister, openly push media training. Now I know there's a fine line between government influencing the media and government pushing for media training. But I don't thing that Mr. Minister's hands were as tied as he was tryna make out. Correct me if I am wrong, please.

Still, made me realise that although I couldn't find any government scholarships when I tried to go study media, I never saw any media associations or media houses at any career fairs either (and I went to A LOT of career fairs in my day). So while I was hating on poor Neil (snicker) the reality is that the media itself isn't looking to training or improvement anymore than the government is. Hey, if it ain't broke, why break it?

So I am going to vote, just like (after de wedding) I am going to join a local media association and try to help pressure media houses to TRAIN their damn people. Activism is not based in any political party's camp. It's about knowing the issues that need to be solved and partnering with people who want to help you solve them. I think we should all get off the party bandwagons for a minute and think like activists instead. Then instead of blaming it on the government when things go wrong, we'd realise that WE can change the world, once we willing to work, we have a plan and we are committed.

However, it's ok to blame the government captain on things like Udecott, and NAPA and the Lighthouse project because clearly, the captain is into some very piratical steering. And I not kinky like that.