JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Is Dr Rowley ready to be PM?

by

20121006

As a na­tion on the road to pro­gres­sive na­tion sta­tus, we must pause and re­flect on what we ex­pend time, ef­fort and en­er­gy. Aren't we sup­posed to be con­cerned with in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues and what af­fects many coun­tries in­clud­ing the cur­rent su­per­pow­er?

A very crit­i­cal as­sem­bly took place re­cent­ly. What un­fold­ed was im­por­tant for all coun­tries es­pe­cial­ly the US since the death of its Am­bas­sador Stevens and oth­er diplo­mats in the Mid­dle East. Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ah­madine­jad ad­dressed the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly twice.

Due to his na­tion's his­to­ry and pub­lic ut­ter­ances, there were sev­er­al in­ter­ests groups that voiced their ob­jec­tions to him ad­dress­ing the as­sem­bly. It was a moot point and some say it in­ten­si­fied the at­mos­phere in NYC on Sep­tem­ber 26, as it was Yom Kip­pur (The Day of Atone­ment and con­sid­ered the holi­est of all days for Jews).

New York City's De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion pub­lic schools were closed as well as many promi­nent busi­ness­es and places of re­pute. The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca had its hands tied as it is oblig­ed to is­sue visas to all rep­re­sen­ta­tives of mem­ber states re­gard­less of how sur­re­al and out­landish their views are and how re­pres­sive their regimes may be as they are bound by the USA-Unit­ed Na­tions "Head­quar­ters Agree­ment" of 1947.

There have been prece­dents though of where the USA re­fused to grant visas to of­fi­cials like Yass­er Arafat in 1988 be­cause he or­dered the killing of a US diplo­mat and for­mer Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, Kurt Wald­heim due to the fact that he con­cealed his role in the mass killings of Jews dur­ing World War II when he was then a Nazi of­fi­cer.

Many coun­tries in­clud­ing ours should have been con­cerned about the Iran­ian Pres­i­dent's re­cent state­ments on Is­rael. He pub­licly stat­ed that Is­rael is "an in­sult to hu­man­i­ty...a can­cer­ous tu­mour" and called for "its dis­ap­pear­ance." Un­der Pres­i­dent Ah­madine­jad's rule, Iran added pres­sure in its per­se­cu­tion of re­li­gious mi­nor­i­ty groups es­pe­cial­ly those of the Ba­hai faith.

Ac­counts from jour­nal­ists and cor­re­spon­dents liv­ing there in­di­cate that many mem­bers of that faith face fre­quent ha­rass­ment, tor­ture, op­pres­sive treat­ment and un­fair im­pris­on­ment. Those dis­si­dents against the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment who sup­port the mem­bers of the Ba­hai faith al­so get as­sault­ed.

All coun­tries in the as­sem­bly that are al­lies with the Unit­ed States against such op­pres­sive acts against west­ern regimes, must put their heads to­geth­er and of­fer so­lu­tions and ac­tive­ly take part in ac­tion-ori­ent­ed, pro­gres­sive bi-lat­er­al and mul­ti-lat­er­al talks to help with del­e­ga­tions to bring a res­o­lu­tion to this cri­sis.

Iran al­so con­tin­ues with its nu­clear weapons pro­gramme to­tal­ly dis­re­gard­ing the poli­cies and reg­u­la­tions of the In­ter­na­tion­al Atom­ic En­er­gy Agency and the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. Do we re­call what Trinidad and To­ba­go was do­ing on Sep­tem­ber 11, (on the 11th An­niver­sary of the 9/11 at­tacks) when over 3,500 de­ceased names were be­ing read out by the vic­tims fam­i­lies and when the US Am­bas­sador and oth­er diplo­mats were killed si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in the East?

These in­ter­na­tion­al events were be­ing viewed by mil­lions-even the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions can­di­dates, the cur­rent Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date/Re­pub­li­can nom­i­nee, Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney put aside all pol­i­tick­ing on that day. Even, all the ma­jor net­works re­spect­ed that and fol­lowed same.

What did our lo­cal lead­ers in wait­ing such as Dr Row­ley do? What Dr Row­ley should have done was hold talks with the rel­e­vant par­ties in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of for­eign Af­fairs, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and oth­er per­sons qual­i­fied in the field of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions and those with ex­pe­ri­ence in in­ter­na­tion­al peace-mak­ing re­la­tions so that the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs would have some­thing sol­id to dis­cuss with the many rep­re­sen­ta­tives from oth­er na­tions who as­sem­bled in New York City.

They could have dis­cussed the so­cio-eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal re­la­tions and a way for­ward in deal­ing with the con­tin­u­ous un­rest in the Mid­dle East, es­pe­cial­ly since many au­to­crat­ic/to­tal­i­tar­i­an states like Libya move to­wards es­tab­lish­ing true democ­ra­cy which is prov­ing to be quite an ar­du­ous tasks as there are so many is­sues to deal with.

Even bet­ter, the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion should have sought an au­di­ence with the Prime Min­is­ter to dis­cuss in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues that im­pact up­on Trinidad's econ­o­my. Af­ter all, what is the role of a true op­po­si­tion in any re­al democ­ra­cy? Is Dr Row­ley ready to be Prime Min­is­ter if it hap­pened in the morn­ing?

The role of the Op­po­si­tion is not to just crit­i­cise but to of­fer so­lu­tions-vi­able and plau­si­ble so­lu­tions. Have we heard any­thing from him since as­sum­ing of­fice on ways to com­bat crime and stim­u­late the econ­o­my and pro­pos­als for so­cial pro­grammes? Has he done re­search to see what ob­tains in ju­ris­dic­tions like USA and Cana­da to see what would work here?

All this en­er­gy over two weeks now on con­demn­ing and ill-speak­ing is ridicu­lous and to­tal­ly un­be­com­ing. I im­plore all to view CNN or BBC to be en­light­ened, ed­u­cat­ed on in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues.

Mor­ley Braith­waite

Trinci­ty


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored