Pray for your goal but also apply your hands to the task - Alcyonenews

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Posted October 19, 2018

Pray for your goal but also apply your hands to the task

The title of this piece originated in the Oracle of Delphi, in Greece, where it was pronounced a long time ago. It has been vetted by History, throughout the intervening eons.

Elections have been corrupted to the level that often we have to “select the lesser evil” from the slate on the ballot. In any event, elections, other than acclamations, necessitate assessing, in size and kind, the merits and demerits of the candidates. The situation acquires additional dimensions of significance when candidates deliberately hide the truth about themselves and their intentions.

Another handicap of the system is that it has morphed into one compelling us to vote on what the candidates tell us instead of what we need and want to learn about them and what we want them to do for us – that is to say, they control the society’s agenda and this does not necessarily synchronize with democracy.

Linden MacIntyre (CBC: The 5th Estate) observed:

“What we know shapes what we think. What we think determines our behaviour. There will always be clandestine efforts to manage what we think and thus control how we behave as consumers and as citizens. But there is also a fundamental human impulse to resist manipulation and, because secrecy is essential to manipulation and control, there will always be individuals who will rebel against it.”

The outgoing LTC was first elected in November 2011 with a strong mandate to bring change to a Trust resenting change. In the 2011 campaign I raised with the candidates the following three issues:

“1. Open Government; 2. Riparian Area Regulation; and 3. Booth Canal.”

George Grams did not respond before the election; Peter Grove responded enthusiastically on all of them.

After being elected, Grove and Grams tried to honour their pre-election promises, but it did not take long before the Trust Staff changed the Trustees’ minds. Visibly, the “Trustees-for-Change” were falling fast under the spell of the Staff.

Eventually, I thought that firing a shot over the bow may remind them of their mission. In May 23, 2013 it being the middle of their then 3-year term, I brought to them a delegation titled. “Looking Up the Kilt of a Term-inally middle aged LTC”. It mirrored their performance as seen from the public stand.

The trustees came back with their own mid-term account, talking platitudes such as claiming having made progress on “affordable housing” and some other platitudes. But they did not touch on any of the issues I raised.

The second half of 2013, was an orgy of Trust suppression of free speech, the process being marshalled by Trustee Grove. At the end of 2013 I reviewed again the conduct of the LTC in a detailed, 10-page delegation titled “The SSI LTC at its Second Anniversary – a Report to Society” for reading at the November 14, 2013 LTC meeting.

The third anniversary of that LTC came just before the 2014 Local government elections. An election in which both incumbents were re-elected.For the November 6, 2014 LTC meeting I submitted a delegation titled “A Review of the Performance of the outgoing SSI LTC” which, of course, “they” censored.

The failures of the LTC were made possible by intense censorship. Secrecy fosters corruption which in turn drives recklessness. To avert that we keep the doors of courtrooms open and build public galleries in the Parliament chambers.

I will quote a line that encapsulates what is wrong with the LTC and prescribe how to make things right.

“Secrecy is the mother lode of everything people dislike about the Islands Trust. Conversely, there is no hope for public endearment of the Trust, until virtue is forced upon it by making it operate in view of the public eye.”

Now we are at the closing of the second term of the Grove and Grams LTC. Sad to say the reviews of their first term remain valid as they were written, ever to the end of the that LTC’s second term.

I am looking forward to a new LTC that would bring about the change we so badly need.

Hope springs eternal – So, I wish us plenty of Luck and promise to do our part.

Tom V.