Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley has come un­der crit­i­cism from sev­er­al quar­ters over his be­hav­iour to­wards a young teenaged girl, Rav­ina Ram­per­sad, dur­ing re­cent Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in San Fer­nan­do.Pho­tographs cap­tured il­lus­trat­ed Row­ley in a win­ing po­si­tion be­hind Ram­per­sad who was in a bent-over ori­en­ta­tion. Row­ley, with what ap­peared a smirk on his face, al­so wield­ed an al­co­holic bev­er­age in hand.

Oth­er pho­tos with Row­ley and mas­quer­aders al­so por­trayed drinks in hand. (See pho­to in T&T Guardian dat­ed 19/02/15). The PNM has ba­si­cal­ly re­spond­ed that Row­ley has bro­ken no law and his be­hav­iour is typ­i­cal of what oc­curs dur­ing Car­ni­val time.

South mas man Ivan Kalicha­ran, in whose band Row­ley ap­peared as glit­terati in the "San­do" crowd, al­so de­fend­ed Row­ley in self-serv­ing terms. Kalicha­ran, in cel­e­bra­tion of his tri­umph for cop­ping the south ti­tle of band of the year, chose to be pho­tographed with fel­low pa­trons hold­ing large quan­ti­ties of al­co­holic drinks in hand for the dai­ly news­pa­pers.

Jack Warn­er made cer­tain state­ments in re­la­tion to the is­sue most of which, to me, made no sense. How­ev­er, one of his al­leged state­ments was un­for­tu­nate and racial­ly di­vi­sive. Ac­cord­ing to news re­ports he said, "Sat Ma­haraj griev­ance is, and he has said so, it's an East In­di­an girl..." I wish to place on record that I did not in­flu­ence the In­di­an girls who have all left Jack Warn­er's po­lit­i­cal par­ty, the ILP.

My shock is over the fact that Row­ley, a man sup­pos­ed­ly 65 years old, was win­ing on a teenaged girl in a man­ner which left a lot to be de­sired. But at no time did I re­fer to Row­ley or Ram­per­sad's eth­nic­i­ty. By de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­quot­ing me, Warn­er bla­tant­ly at­tempt­ed to bring race in­to a se­ri­ous de­bate. Dai­ly he proves what a bel­liger­ent, pon­tif­i­cat­ing and hyp­o­crit­i­cal politi­cian he has be­come.

When it comes to Car­ni­val, the Ma­ha Sab­ha has con­sis­tent­ly stood against what it has be­come and the be­hav­iour of our cit­i­zens who par­tic­i­pate in it. In fact, for the past five years we have been se­vere­ly crit­i­cal of the PP Gov­ern­ment, which we oth­er­wise sup­port, for the amount of mon­ey it pumps in­to Car­ni­val as it re­wards the coun­try with noth­ing pos­i­tive­ly tan­gi­ble.

With the ad­vance­ment of so­cial me­dia like Face­book and Twit­ter, J'Ou­vert, ole mas, Mon­day and Tues­day mas and last lap cool down fetes are por­trayed si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly for the whole world to see. As an aside, videos have gone vi­ral with pic­tures of Row­ley and Ram­per­sad su­per­im­posed in com­pro­mis­ing po­si­tions, "on the counter, on the so­fa, caught on cam­era," dubbed with pop­u­lar Shag­gy song, "It wasn't me." An­oth­er video shows Snoop Dog and his "homies" hail­ing Row­ley. That's how far it has gone.

Re­turn­ing to our se­ri­ous note, what the world and our young peo­ple are wit­ness­ing is lit­er­al­ly a grow­ing naked­ness of our men and women, a phe­nom­e­nal amount of al­co­hol con­sump­tion, be­hav­iour which is con­trary to their sense of what is right and de­cent and a to­tal degra­da­tion of the moral fab­ric of our so­ci­ety.One video on Face­book showed a woman who was com­plete­ly naked win­ing on the back of a truck dur­ing Car­ni­val!

I ask peo­ple to un­der­stand that whilst we may have di­vid­ed views on this on­go­ing de­bate, we must not let it di­vide us. The ques­tion for all right-think­ing cit­i­zens is re­al­ly a sim­ple one.Are we as a peo­ple com­fort­able with the be­hav­iour dis­played dur­ing Car­ni­val? Are we be­ing fair to our so­ci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly the young chil­dren, when we por­tray al­co­hol and lewd be­hav­iour as ac­cept­able dur­ing Car­ni­val?

The Ma­ha Sab­ha is clear on our an­swers to these ques­tions. Al­co­hol is strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed dur­ing our Phag­wa cel­e­bra­tions. We have spo­ken against the use of lyrics in chut­ney songs which den­i­grate women and por­tray al­co­hol as some kind of ide­al. Thank­ful­ly, some ef­fort was made this year to clean up the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch in this re­gard.

In the past decade, Ma­ha Shiv Raa­tri cel­e­bra­tions have al­most al­ways, co­in­cid­ed with the tim­ing of Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions and Hin­dus were ad­vised to steer clear of Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties. This was not a racist move or un­pa­tri­ot­ic ges­ture by the Ma­ha Sab­ha. It was sim­ply our ad­her­ence to our be­liefs and high­er stan­dards of be­hav­iour.

When asked for my com­ments on this "Row­ley take a lil wine with ah teen" af­fair, I did vol­un­teer a com­par­i­son be­tween Row­ley and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. My rea­son for so do­ing was sim­ple. PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­em­pli­fies the high­er ideals which we sub­scribe to whilst Row­ley and the PNM do not.

In the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions peo­ple will have to choose whether they want to vote for high­er ideals hence the PP, or they are pre­pared to con­done the dis­grace­ful be­hav­iour of Row­ley and the PNM. Row­ley has re­fused to of­fer an apol­o­gy of any sort and we are left to won­der whether his po­si­tion would be the same if it turned out to be a younger girl he was win­ing on.

Maybe Ca­lyp­son­ian Crazy can remix his pop­u­lar song Nan­ny wine down so with "Row­ley wine down low!"