Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

"Right now, I am say­ing to my col­leagues that what this Com­mis­sion of In­quiry is look­ing at, is ten times worse than what hap­pened in Pi­ar­co Air­port. It's even more brazen. I can­not be­lieve they could have been so bold." These were the words of Dr Kei­th Row­ley while speak­ing in Par­lia­ment on Oc­to­ber 19, 2009 on the Val­i­da­tion and Im­mu­ni­ty from Pro­ceed­ings Bill 2009, a bill which at the time sought to val­i­date the Uff Com­mis­sion of In­quiry in­to Ude­cott.

Row­ley fur­ther stressed, "Mr Speak­er, this coun­try has to un­der­stand that some­times you have to break the mould to make a new shape. And I am break­ing the mould! I am break­ing the mould! I'm break­ing it on be­half of all the PNM peo­ple, who, in 1986, when we went to cam­paign in my area–I was there, I don't know who else was there, I was there–and you are go­ing door to door and they are slam­ming doors in your face in West­moor­ings, in Glen­coe, in Bayshore and all they telling you about is O'Hal­lo­ran."

Hear­ing these words from the dis­missed Min­is­ter of Hous­ing, the cit­i­zen­ry and by ex­ten­sion, the elec­torate were forced to sit up and lis­ten. Af­ter all, these were not the words of a mere PNM sup­port­er who sim­ply cam­paigned for the PNM in 1986 but in­stead were the thun­der­ous ut­ter­ances of a se­nior mem­ber of the PNM and a for­mer cab­i­net mem­ber.

At the time, many would have be­lieved that the present Op­po­si­tion Leader was gen­uine­ly against cor­rup­tion and that he tru­ly cared about mak­ing things right in this land. What is clear to us now is that the leader of the Op­po­si­tion's quest for pow­er very of­ten leads him to ap­pear ridicu­lous.

In­deed, we are now forced to ask whether he was tru­ly con­cerned about the ex­tent of cor­rup­tion in Ude­cott in the first place or did he seize an op­por­tu­ni­ty that un­der­mined his then leader, Patrick Man­ning, whose po­si­tion he in­her­it­ed?

In that very pre­sen­ta­tion on Ude­cott, Dr Row­ley warned his col­leagues in the PNM that the next elec­tion "will be the Ude­cott elec­tion." Some thought that this was giv­ing the Op­po­si­tion po­lit­i­cal am­mu­ni­tion they need­ed against the PNM. The PNM was de­feat­ed at the polls and this cleared the way for Row­ley to take over the man­tle of lead­er­ship.

In this re­gard, one can­not help but es­tab­lish a par­al­lel be­tween Row­ley and Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, an ob­ser­va­tion so keen­ly not­ed by for­mer PM Patrick Man­ning. He stat­ed in Par­lia­ment on Oc­to­ber 21, 2009 that Row­ley's at­tack against him was sim­i­lar to Ma­haraj's against Pan­day.

Man­ning, said he saw a "tag-team re­la­tion­ship be­tween the mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin West and the Mem­ber for Tabaquite" (Ma­haraj), a method "which is not un­fa­mil­iar to me" and which was used to bring down a gov­ern­ment in 2001.

With the oc­ca­sion­al ap­pear­ance of Ramesh on shared plat­forms with Row­ley, there has been some ex­pec­ta­tion of an al­liance. Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal re­ferred to this al­liance as "Ram­ley" and re­mind­ed us that in 2007 the Mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin West said, "If that gen­tle­man (Ma­haraj) com­ing in my di­rec­tion, I turn around and walk." It now ap­pears that Row­ley has changed his neg­a­tive ap­pre­ci­a­tion of Mr Ramesh Ma­haraj.

Kei­th Row­ley was at that meet­ing in To­ba­go dur­ing the last To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions, when the "Cal­cut­ta Ship" racist state­ment was made. He has nev­er apol­o­gised nor dis­tanced him­self for the racist re­marks of his col­league on this PNM plat­form. And he is yet to apol­o­gise for the E-mail­gate fi­as­co.

Dr Kei­th Row­ley, leader of the PNM, has, how­ev­er, been at­tempt­ing to soft­en and change his im­age. He was pic­tured on the road­side eat­ing dou­bles in Debe, the In­di­an heart­land. This was fol­lowed by him vis­it­ing the Di­vali Na­gar at last year's Di­vali cel­e­bra­tion. He was dressed in an In­di­an kur­ta.

In 2010, dur­ing his re­sponse to the bud­get, he said to our Form One stu­dents that the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion thought that they were "dun­cy­head" first for­m­ers (Hansard, Sep­tem­ber 14, 2010 p412). This is the same man who fur­ther said that some of our school chil­dren were "be­hav­ing like hye­nas in the African jun­gle." These are the re­marks of a man who wish­es to lead the youths of this na­tion to a bet­ter to­mor­row.

In ad­di­tion to Man­ning's tes­ti­mo­ny, for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate Dan­ny Mon­tano warned us about how Row­ley would treat UNC sup­port­ers if he got in­to pow­er.

We must al­so not for­get the words of Dr Bose Shar­ma, a PNM ac­tivist, who said at the time of the in­ter­nal elec­tion of the PNM ear­li­er this year, that Row­ley was en­gag­ing in "pol­i­tics of vengeance." If this is how Dr Row­ley be­haves in Op­po­si­tion, we ask, what would hap­pen if he gets in­to pow­er?