Caribbean’s Sisyphus complex

THE EDITOR, Madam:
The tale of Sisyphus is about a man consigned to roll a large rock up a hill that never reaches the top but rolls down again, only to have to be pushed back up. The back story to this oft-repeated tale is that Sisyphus came to his boulder-rolling eternity because of a number of indiscretions and crimes.  It was his punishment after death.
Like many, he was no innocent, but he was not ignoring, disregarding or avoiding the public trust given to him. Those people are in service to self, selfishly, not selflessly as promised at election time.
Unfortunately, residents of the Caribbean are forced to endure such a life after the brouhaha and tribalism of elections. Somehow their collective memories are blocked just before they visit the next ballot box.
This should sound familiar to members of Caribbean society who are ruled by members of the Sisyphus society that are elected every few years to lie, assist in maritime murders, and engage in illicit enrichment, locally or abroad, or political corruption.
Multi-million police budgets, helicopters, boats, preventative detentions and the like are of no meaning to core problems that keep on being rolled up the hill, over and over. Forget new thought, let’s keep on repeating the failed, comforting, policies of yesteryear. We might as well give the police mule carts and reintroduce hangings as we cancel human rights across Caribbean countries.
But now there is a more wicked posture that perpetuates the brain fog that a state of emergency or preventative detention will remove all crime. Windows will be left open and doors unlocked in that fairy tale, read only by the mentally frail or vulnerable to imagine some fantasy of reality. All falsehoods.
When applied to Caribbean politicians and their unwinnable war on crime in various ways, there will never be a victory for eternity. Just more posturing, press releases, government appointments, attacks on democracy and human rights.
If the cap fits, let them wear it.

PETER POLACK
Former criminal lawyer 
Cayman Islands