Clevon Raphael

?For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day some­time ago caused one of his many furors when he de­clared pol­i­tics had its own moral­i­ty. I agreed whole­heart­ed­ly and those who dis­agreed did so sim­ply be­cause of who said it. My be­lief in Pan­day's con­tro­ver­sial stance was rude­ly rekin­dled while tak­ing in the much an­tic­i­pat­ed ad­dress last Thurs­day evening by rene­gade Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment Diego Mar­tin West can­di­date in the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion, Dr Kei­th Row­ley. While there were strong views from those who were sat­is­fied and those who were not with the con­tents of his speech, his per­for­mance to me reeked of un­grate­ful- ness. It al­so gave cre­dence to Mr Pan­day's as­ser­tion about pol­i­tics and its own brand of moral­i­ty and, in­deed, I was in no way sur­prised in the over­all stand tak­en by the man who sees him­self as one day be­ing the coun­try's po­lit­i­cal CEO.

Noth­ing is wrong with that as I am sure the goal of most politi­cians is to set­tle them­selves at the top of the heap, the same way oth­er pro­fes­sion­als would vie to be the top dog in their cho­sen fields. I knew be­fore­hand that no way was he go­ing to do any­thing to spoil what­ev­er chances he be­lieves the PNM has in re­tain­ing of­fice in the soon-to-be-held polls. And I hope Row­ley did not in­clude me among those who he said were giv­ing him "bas­ket" to do dam­age to his par­ty be­cause of his still run­ning im­passe with his po­lit­i­cal leader, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, as he told the Sun­day Ex­press. I know he is not stu­pid, nei­ther is he a fool, and it is pre­cise­ly be­cause of those rea­sons I con­clud­ed that he let down the thou­sands who (ex­clud­ing his PNM sup­port­ers) sup­port­ed him in the rift be­tween him­self and Man­ning.

The most defin­ing mo­ment of his ad­dress was his very clear warn­ing to those who were so mind­ful that they should leave Mr Man­ning alone, while at the same time us­ing cod­ed lan­guage to tele­graph that his pub­lic dis­pute with Man­ning was still very much alive. I found it unimag­in­able that Kei­th should seek to en­dorse some­one to con­tin­ue in such high of­fice when for the last two years it ap­peared that per­son spared no ef­fort to de­stroy his rep­u­ta­tion, his ca­reer, and I dare say even per­haps his fam­i­ly life by lev­el­ling some very se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions which turned out to be com­plete­ly with­out mer­it.

If the PNM should win the com­ing polls, would Dr Row­ley feel proud to know that he con­tributed to the re­turn of a leader who the na­tion had forced to ap­point a com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the Ude­cott/Calder Hart af­fair, a scan­dal which Row­ley said was ten times worse than the air­port cor­rup­tion un­der the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion? The na­tion ral­lied around Row­ley when he warned Man­ning about an out of con­trol Ude­cott, which was spend­ing the na­tion's pat­ri­mo­ny willy nil­ly. The na­tion ral­lied around Row­ley when, with­out con­crete rhyme or rea­son, Man­ning threw his be­hind out of the Cab­i­net. Oh yes, the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­ster kicked out his one-time very close friend and con­fi­dante on the flim­sy grounds of "wa­jang" be­hav­iour, the ex­act de­tails of which on­ly Man­ning and a hand­ful of news car­ri­ers in the Cab­i­net are fa­mil­iar with.

The na­tion ral­lied around Row­ley af­ter Man­ning in­di­rect­ly im­pli­cat­ed him in a $10 mil­lion mat­ter which was lat­er in­creased to $20 mil­lion at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. Sub­se­quent rev­e­la­tions vin­di­cat­ed the fiery par­lia­men­tar­i­an from any wrong­do­ing. On these and oth­er oc­ca­sions the na­tion gave Kei­th moral sus­te­nance even when the Prime Min­is­ter de­scribed him as a rag­ing bull and one who gets very, very an­gry when he is se­ri­ous­ly op­posed, even by the Prime Min­is­ter him­self. Who al­so can for­get fur­ther par­lia­men­tary at­tacks by Man­ning who claimed that Row­ley was com­plete­ly out of con­trol and ably sup­port­ed by his (Man­ning) min­ions, in­clud­ing a for­mer close po­lit­i­cal al­ly of Row­ley, Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert. So with all that bad blood which flowed and is still gush­ing be­tween both men, it was in­con­ceiv­able and in­deed un­fath­omable that Row­ley could make such a ve­he­ment warn­ing to all and sundry to back off his dear­ly beloved and well re­spect­ed leader, Patrick Man­ning.

Why is it so dif­fi­cult for Row­ley to say that he can­not en­dorse Man­ning as the best leader for the PNM but he re­spects and ac­cepts the will of the ma­jor­i­ty of the par­ty to have Man­ning lead it? Af­ter all, that is the core of democ­ra­cy. No sen­si­ble per­son would have thought that Row­ley was jump­ing off the MV PNM par­tic­u­lar­ly at this time or that he could be goad­ed in­to so do­ing. Is it too much to ex­pect Row­ley to say that he re­mains com­mit­ted to what he has said? That the Gov­ern­ment may have closed the sta­ble door af­ter the horse bolt­ed? And like all of us who have sup­port­ed him in his cam­paign against cor­rup­tion at Ude­cott, he con­tin­ues to hold his nose un­til the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to it bears re­sults? But by his un­am­bigu­ous ad­mo­ni­tion that Man­ning is sa­cred prop­er­ty and should not be touched by his po­lit­i­cal de­trac­tors, Row­ley has made us be­lieve that he is more in­ter­est­ed in his per­son­al po­lit­i­cal agen­da than what is best for T&T.