Looking back on any year brings back memories, helped with sights, sounds, smells and feelings that act as reminders of the events experienced during the past year. The year we are about to say goodbye to has also yielded its own harvest of reminders. 

The year has had its share of surprises and disappointments, happy and sad moments as well as the low- water mark of chicanery. But if I had to pinpoint one thing that has been consistent throughout, it has to be that peculiar but distinctive smell that has been choking the island since the beginning of the year. 

The putrid smell of death started hovering over the island since the beginning of the year with the tragic death of dialysis patients in the most atrocious and merciless conditions. The heartbreaking wailing of their relatives and friends added to the already heavy atmosphere of mourning which paralysed the island. And the year closed with more deaths in the darkness of the ENT and other hospital wards, with a stronger smell of the bodies left to rot for hours before the relatives could finally retrieve them for a swift, unceremonious burial. It took a lot of rotting bodies before the authorities realised that something had to be done about the dead before the burial.

As the bodies piled up, hospitals became overstretched, the cemeteries were filling up fast and other cemeteries opening up to the Covid deaths, the foul smell of lies by ministers who were massaging the figures and pretending that we were still Covid safe turned a crisis into a disaster. It took many more deaths before the foul-smelling lies were replaced by the deadly smell of silence.

When the whole nation got paralysed with fear and grief, the rancid smell of corruption started seeping out of Government House, revealing a Mafia-like system that was enriching the cronies at the expense of the hapless citizens. This was made even more indecent by job losses and the erosion of the meagre savings of many small entrepreneurs, who watched helplessly as the companies they spent a lifetime building went belly up. The ministers’ efforts to escape the perception of blatant corruption and nepotism were at best laboured, at worst useless. The prime minister crawled from under a rock every now and then to read a prepared, recorded speech before racing back to the sanctuary of the PMO. 

While the rotten smell of corruption and favouritism scandals permeated the air, the fetid smell of oppression made it even more unbreathable as more and more anti-democratic laws made their way to our statute book, stifling our radios, threatening more laws against the written press and discouraging any forms of criticism. 

The most rancid of all smells perhaps was the realisation that the country is divided into two: those who are close to power and for whom all hurdles are removed, allowing them to amass obscene amounts of money overnight, and those who had built companies through blood, sweat and tears and were starved of oxygen and medicines – literally – and allowed to perish. This crushed any remaining illusions of equality, fairness and basic human behaviour. The resulting bitter feeling of helplessness and injustice lingered on as the year drew to its end.

In the middle of the measured festivities this year, which saw far fewer people openly celebrating or shooting out fireworks, either out of decency, grief or lack of means, a late Christmas gift was handed out to everyone in the form of an increase in the price of petrol. This, for many, may have been the last straw. It seemed like Government’s way of saying that ministers and their cronies will continue to squander public funds, inflation will continue to rise and our purchasing power will be more and more eroded. 

While this is happening, grand projects that will most probably make it to the long list of white elephants are going ahead as all of us continue to pay for the fantasy and enrichment of a few of us.

The year stinks in the nostrils of most hard working, decent citizens. It’s as if a skunk was running loose on the island and is contaminating every breath of air we are trying to steal from Covid. And unlike Covid, there are no precautions to take to reduce the risk of suffering from it. A real skunky year! I wish you a better smelling year ahead.