Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 20/Jan 04:27

Bacchanal time again

Austin Fido DONALD TRUMP is officially inaugurated for his second stint as US President today. Meanwhile, the world braces for another dose of America’s untrammelled id masquerading as an international statesman. Indeed, there has already been a detectable Trump effect on world affairs in the gap between the (re-)election of America’s favourite impulsive narcissist and his swearing-in ceremony. Denmark has a new coat of arms thanks to Donald eyeing Greenland with an ardour that suggests he’d like it to be his fourth wife. There is a not-unconvincing argument that Trump dealt the fatal blow to Justin Trudeau’s flagging political career, and now Canada is on the hunt for a new leader. The return of the bull elephant to the china shop is not all bad news: it is generally accepted that the incoming Trump administration was significant in lighting a fire under the latest efforts to bring a measure of peace to Palestine. Nor is the Caribbean unaffected. Trump has unsettled Panama with a bizarre threat to take back the damn canal. It remains unclear how his administration will handle Venezuela, a vital TT trading partner so determinedly hurtling into rogue statehood that only Cuba and Nicaragua sent actual heads of state to watch Nicolas Maduro celebrate stealing an election at his inauguration earlier this month. And yet, one has the sense that the advent of another Trump administration is less disturbing to the Caribbean than it is to other regions of the world. In TT’s case, this apparent lack of Trump-induced anxiety (Trumpxiety? Trumpanoia?) owes much to its own government’s absolute mastery of the news cycle. The PNM’s resolution for the new year is very clear: take control of the headlines and don’t let go. From the declaration of a State of Emergency on 30 December, to Keith Rowley announcing he would soon retire from politics (3 January), to the news that Stuart Young will shortly be promoted from primary minister to Prime Minister (6 January), the year started with just about every day in TT dominated by conversations about the actions of its government. You’d have found less talk of the PNM in Balisier House than in the TT media at the start of 2025. As for the Caribbean at large, I think we experience less Trump terror than other places because much of what we see happening in the USA is not unfamiliar to students of politics in this region. A country where the sitting president has spent his entire term in office being accused of stealing an election from his predecessor, while to most objective observers it’s clear it was the predecessor who tried to do the election-stealing. Welcome to Guyana. A party where a dominant political leader has invested considerable energy into trying to position one of his children as his successor? Hello, St Vincent. A nation seduced by a wild-eyed narcissist boosted by a billionaire car salesman with a crippling social media addiction? Ok, it’s not a perfect analogy. You’re on your own with that one, America — good luck with it. But if any American wants to talk about what it’s like to have a felon president, Suriname’s Desi Bouterse managed to win an election despite a conviction for drug trafficking. You say your president is a septuagenarian who likes to scold the press? There are reporters in TT with PTSD from attending prime ministerial press conferences over the last decade. We may not have seen it all before, but even a casual acquaintance with politics in the Caribbean provides a feeling of familiarity with what is happening Stateside. And perhaps a sense of readiness for what might lie ahead. Because the truth is that the US has never been an ideal neighbour to our region. The heavyweight to our north is a little too noisy, somehow too inclined to interfere in our affairs without invitation, and too eager to look the other way when we could use some help. If the primary complaint about Trump-led USA is that it makes the most powerful country in the world unpredictable — well, that has often been the Caribbean’s experience. From the invasion and occupation of Haiti to the time when the region was a Cold War chess board and the CIA was busily destabilising regional governments from Guyana to Jamaica: the US has rarely allowed the thought of chaos in the Caribbean to pause the advancement of its own interests. At worst, a second Trump administration will simply be more of the same. The post Bacchanal time again appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.