Lessons of the last two years

By *Jomo Sanga Thomas

(“Plain Talk” Sept. 23, 2022)

The world as we knew it might never be the same again. The rulers of the world have guaranteed an abnormal state of play. They have employed tried and tested mind-bending techniques, driven primarily by fear, to tighten their control over the affairs of the world. We may look back at the last two years as the marker in history when most things we held dear were snatched from us with the assurance that these measures were all intended to protect us.

The biggest casualty of the COVID Plandemic was the assault on constitutional rights and freedoms. The right to conscience, freedom to believe or not believe, to think and express those thoughts and opinions were given a warning to depart. Anything that did not fit the control agenda was dismissed as misinformation, disinformation or worse. Those who tried to bring balance, nuance and truth to the discourse were smeared, cursed and removed from popular tribunes of expression. In classic Orwellian fashion, the real conspirators labelled sceptics and contrarian conspiracy theorists.

We were warned, but we never took heed. Decades ago, the more conscious among us proclaimed that we were at war. They cautioned that there was no such thing as a free lunch. Everything has a cost. Most of all, they told us, “freedom ain’t free”. All too often, we dismissed these thoughts as mindless sloganeering.

We fail to heed these warnings to our chagrin. We all thought our right to a religion or a job was sacred. No one will dream of taking these from us. Some said most of what we had was God-given and, therefore, beyond the reach of busy-bodied politicians and policymakers. We were dead wrong, as the last two years have proven.

Who in their right mind would conceive that the leader of our country will callously declare to workers, take the jab or lose your job, dictate to citizens which doctor or religion to choose or believe? Who thought that world leaders would conspire to bring the entire planet to a standstill to enforce their control agenda?

Who would believe that the most trained and certified among us would lead the loudest chorus intended to smear, shame and condemn those who saw through the con game and attempted to alert citizens to the sinister plans?

Well, doubt no more. Those elected to lead and protect us failed miserably at the task. The time has come for us to rearrange our thinking and reorganise our lives so that we would be better able to handle the next scare tactic, plandemic or evil con game that is just around the corner.

The last two years have shown that those in authority cannot be trusted. Here on in, everything they say must be taken with a pound of salt.

Last Monday, the World Health Organization said the end of the Plandemic is in sight. The same day President Biden declared the COVID Plandemic over. They persist in telling the world that over six million people died of COVID. They conflate and deliberately attempt to confuse. They make no distinction between those who died from, with those who died with COVID. Many leaders and policymakers appear not to discern a scientific difference between from COVID and with COVID.

In April, former British PM Boris Johnson told citizens they must learn to live with the virus. Across the world, leaders who towed an alarmist line have climbed down from the panic pole. They now speak in rational terms. They desperately try to engage citizens in a useful, educational dialogue.

Here in SVG, things move in a glacial fashion. We stubbornly maintain the illegal medical emergency that flies in the face of the constitution. Our leaders continue with the draconian COVID mandates that resulted in the dismissal of hundreds of state and private sector employees. We were the last in the region to remove the restrictions on travel.

Rather than enter into a meaningful dialogue with the trade unions, the governing party pick and chooses which union leader to engage. Government leaders attempt to unjustly label or isolate strong union leaders who are not in their control. The leader of the country tells workers to disregard their unions and follow him.

The leader of our country vainly maintains that he cannot reinstate dismissed workers because it will prove that the mandate was illegal and wrong. But the ego is the devil. Our leader is prepared to illegally punish workers, lock them out of work, deny them a livelihood because he does not want to admit to a mistake.

Our leader’s position would be laughable if it were not so injurious to citizens. He is dangerously prone to making mistakes. Sadly, like the emperor who is naked, he appears incapable of recognising that he has no clothes.

One cannot be a serious policymaker, dismiss workers, deny them a salary, turn their lives into a living hell, then egotistically refuse to suspend your mandate and reinstate workers on the ground that you don’t want to admit that you made a mistake. No mistake, you say? Why then invite unvaccinated, locked-out workers to the workplace? After threatening public workers with economic assassination, they are now told they can return with all benefits intact. Whatever trust the leader had has vanished. For someone who claims to have no vanities, this is ego on steroids.

In the face of our government’s pigheadedness, it is now left to the law court to bring it to good sense. The trial, slated for Nov. 29, is rapidly approaching. The workers have applied to the court to adduce expert evidence. They have won the commitment of world-class doctors and scientists whose sole intent is to demonstrate to the court that the government’s mandate was and remains scientifically imprudent, epidemiologically unsound and grossly disproportionate to the COVID challenge.

A legal victory for the workers is within sight. The central task now is to guard and protect the Nov. 29 trial date to ensure that the agony of the dismissed workers is brought to an end. 

*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The opinions presented in this content belong to the author and may not necessarily reflect the perspectives or editorial stance of iWitness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].