Satiricus smiled as he saw the two agri ministers sign off their pre-nup agreement. Progress. It used to be – people just rushed into marriage, thinking that love gon conquer all. Then after the first few months of waking up and seeing a face with no makeup or smelling a breath with no mouthwash… Baddam! … Messy breakup and fighting over the property – and kids.
As in so many things, the Americans showed we how it should be done: they invent the “pre-nuptial agreement”. The Americans don’t like “long story”, so they shorten it to “pre- nup”. The movie stars in Hollywood start it – they were always cutting edge when it came to marriage.
You learn a thing or two when everybody marry six or seven times – like the law of averages. If you know you’re gonna breakup almost for sure, you’d better prepare, no? Hence the “pre- nup”. Some people think it took the charm out of marriage… But what the heck? If three out of four marriages ended on the rocks among the stars… hey, it wasn’t the individuals’ fault… it was a social issue! Since there’s not a lot of Solomons nowadays, it saved having to cut babies in half. You can understand how messy that can be.
So we come back to our agri ministers and their pre-nup.
Imagine that! We in the Caribbean are now cutting ahead – taking the pre-nup from between “people couples” (it used to be between man and woman, but America led the way there too – now same-sex couples are OK) to “country couples”. But why not? When it came to country “break ups” we in the Caribbean were no slouches – we were cutting edge.
After all, we broke up the granddaddy of all marriages between states – the West Indies Federation. Even the Americans couldn’t break up their federation – Abe Lincoln took care of that! Since then we’ve had breakups over airlines, sugar, cement, Guyanese travelling, rice, Jamaicans travelling – not to mention agri.
And here we can come to the pre-nup specifically over agri. Last time agri came up, the then Guyanese prezzie just shake hands when he offered land at giveaway prices to the Caribbean. And before you could say “Rum till I die”, the Trini prime minister started mega farms right in his country. Dissed us! They failed miserably, of course.
Trinis don’t know a fork from a hoe.
So now that they want marriage and land, its best we sign a pre-nup. When the breakup comes – and it will – they won’t get to take we land back to TT.