Pao­lo Ker­na­han

The big draw on Thurs­day evening was Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the crowd's ap­petite not prop­er­ly whet­ted when he made his bal­isi­er-wav­ing spin on the plat­form last Sun­day, paus­ing on­ly for the­atrics and the most in­sin­cere hand­shake ever. It was ex­pect­ed by all that he would si­lence the coali­tion doubters on that mug­gy Sun­day af­ter­noon on the PNM's bat­tle-stag­ing area of Wood­ford Square, where his ges­ture of si­lence spoke more vo­lu­mi­nous­ly than he ever could. You know peo­ple do not give Patrick Man­ning enough cred­it. He is re­viled as be­ing pos­sessed of mea­ger in­tel­lect, un­re­strained ar­ro­gance and bar­ren of tact. I could hear Mr Man­ning say some­thing like, "I will gih dem all de tact dey want, I am a tac­ti­cian!" That would most cer­tain­ly gen­er­ate laugh­ter even if it means noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar to the mass­es. I guess what I am say­ing is: Mr Man­ning you could go ahead and use it if you like.

For those of you who thought the po­lit­i­cal leader would not chance an­oth­er term in of­fice with his neme­sis at his throat, the de­ci­sion ac­tu­al­ly was an easy one for him. Row­ley had so pro­found­ly con­demned the Prime Min­is­ter pub­licly, so ex­posed him as an au­to­crat­ic leviathan, how could he now mount a plat­form and ut­ter a word against the beast in whose name he asks the peo­ple to re­turn him to of­fice? The en­e­my of my en­e­my is my friend: is that not the very prin­ci­ple which has mar­shalled the op­po­si­tion forces against the in­sid­i­ous rule of Patrick Man­ning? On the plat­form at the Star­lite car park, Dr Row­ley of­fered words to the starved ears of his sup­port­ers, many of whom raised their swords along­side him in a blood­less skir­mish with their own par­ty. Dr Row­ley im­me­di­ate­ly de­liv­ered a breath­tak­ing de­fence of the Prime Min­is­ter and scant ref­er­ence to Ude­cott. Sur­pris­ing, ent? It was his wa­ter­loo and a light­en­ing rod for wide­spread con­dem­na­tion of the Gov­ern­ment.

He al­so vil­i­fied Kam­la for hav­ing blocked the Lindquist probe of the air­port scan­dal. More time was de­vot­ed to her than Calder Hart, even though he is on record as hav­ing said that cor­rup­tion at Ude­cott is ten times worse than Pi­ar­co. We should re­mem­ber, as I am sure Dr Row­ley does, that he is still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion in the al­leged dis­ap­pear­ance/mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of $10 mil­lion in the Cleaver Heights project. We were thank­ful­ly re­mind­ed quite re­cent­ly by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (who glee­ful­ly filled Dr Row­ley's shoes as Patrick Man­ning's "krak­en" to be sum­moned for pur­pose of the de­struc­tion of those who would raise a hand against the par­ty) that the for­mer min­is­ter, who was reg­u­lar­ly "b...h-slapped" by Calder Hart, was nev­er cleared by the Uff re­port. In­deed, Dr Row­ley is still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Gov­ern­ment, at­tract­ing a fourth probe no less.

Be­fore that Mr Man­ning had al­so been asked if he felt that Dr Row­ley had been ex­on­er­at­ed. The re­sponse was a cryp­tic "no" at the time.

In the face of all of these is­sues, Dr Row­ley said that the "PNM had sur­ren­dered its lega­cy to one man who was lead­ing the PNM down a road which, I am cer­tain, will be filled with re­gret. And I am not un­com­fort­able with be­ing the on­ly per­son, if I have to be, ob­ject­ing to the road on which the par­ty is be­ing tak­en." Ear­ly in the game, Dr Row­ley made it clear that de­fec­tion to an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty was not an op­tion. His loy­al­ty is to the PNM, the very par­ty which he is pre­pared to watch the po­lit­i­cal leader lead down a path of re­gret for the next five years. Oh and the coun­try will go to hell al­so, but for­get about us for now. It al­so seems that the in­cum­bent for Diego Mar­tin West has an un­par­al­leled ca­pac­i­ty for for­give­ness. His wife was al­so drawn down in­to the muck with an ob­vi­ous­ly PNM-in­spired yarn of $40 mil­lion squir­relled away in a for­eign bank ac­count. His wife, who is al­so no fool, had the bank con­firm with the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al that this in­for­ma­tion was patent­ly false.

This gen­er­at­ed lit­tle more than a hm­mm from Mr Je­re­mie, who ap­par­ent­ly will crawl naked through bro­ken glass to do his mas­ter's bid­ding. Yet Dr Row­ley re­ferred on Thurs­day night to "dis­agree­ments" which we all have in pol­i­tics. Man, I have not spo­ken to friends in years for cussin' me when we got drunk. I am gonna make dat call right...me­ow! "You all must un­der­stand that there are se­ri­ous things in­volved in the al­le­ga­tions against some peo­ple to­day..." These words still res­onate with many of us long af­ter they were bel­lowed by Dr Row­ley, even if he has de­lib­er­ate­ly for­got­ten them. "You can­not throw the cap­tain over­board, while we are sail­ing," an ap­par­ent­ly con­trite Row­ley de­murs. The crowd trills with ex­cite­ment for this long await­ed, if ar­ti­fi­cial, d�tente. I like that ship anal­o­gy so let's run with it. Were you not the one, Com­man­der Row­ley, who mu­tinied and was prompt­ly placed in the hold of the ship on the last voy­age? Were you not hurled with in­sults and abuse by oth­er scurvied crew mem­bers?

We all know the Man­ning vs Row­ley spots so I will not re­gur­gi­tate the text. It does help how­ev­er to take us back to the per­ceived gen­e­sis of the rift. These two have been at fisticuffs since the mid-1980s. Anger, an­i­mos­i­ty, ac­ri­mo­ny..." a very strong di­ag­no­sis from the Prime Min­is­ter of the man whom he is ask­ing you to vote for. Dr Row­ley has al­so at­tract­ed the ad­mit­ted­ly mis­matched fire from Colm Im­bert and Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde, the for­mer who ad­mon­ished Dr Row­ley to give up this ob­ses­sion with Ude­cott so that he might at long last have peace. Were it not for this thin­ly veiled in­sult mas­querad­ing as wit, Dr Row­ley might not have been mind­ed to make ref­er­ence to his oth­er con­cerns, for ex­am­ple: "I want to tell my Gov­ern­ment tonight that the tax I pay, I mark­ing meh mon­ey. And it is to buy med­i­cine for the hos­pi­tal, chalk for the schools and to pay old age pen­sion..." Yet on the plat­form on that balmy Thurs­day evening, these once sear­ing con­cerns had cooled suf­fi­cient­ly to al­low for "loy­al­ty" to breathe once again.

Politi­cians need have no loy­al­ty to the peo­ple be­cause the peo­ple on­ly give po­si­tion, it is par­ty that promis­es pow­er. He al­so seems to have shed his trou­bles over this Gov­ern­ment's ac­qui­si­tion of the be­lea­guered Air Ja­maica, some­thing which he had a ver­i­ta­ble con­nip­tion over. Won­der how he feels about Li­at as the next col­lec­tor's item for the "Fa­ther of Cari­com?" For all of the afore­men­tioned rea­sons, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning re­alised that he could ef­fec­tive­ly neuter the threat of the "rag­ing bull" on the plat­form. He would do more harm to him­self than Man­ning by con­demn­ing the one he as­pires to re­turn to gov­ern­ment with. Am­bi­tion is a hell of a paci­fi­er! As for the fate of Dr Row­ley should the pnm get back in­to pow­er or should Kam­la seize vic­to­ry, well we will have to wait for the evening to see how splen­did the day has been.