Jesse Ramdeo

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Se­nior re­porter

The Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour has come in for strong crit­i­cism from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley stat­ed, “An eth­i­cal coun­cil with­out ethics and steeped in bias is to be ig­nored for what it is.”

The coun­cil mon­i­tors and de­lib­er­ates on the con­duct of politi­cians which is then made pub­lic. It mon­i­tors me­dia re­ports and al­so in­vites the pub­lic to re­port any breach­es of the code of ethics.

The code of eth­i­cal con­duct, which was pre­pared by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of civ­il so­ci­ety in 2014, seeks to fos­ter democ­ra­cy, pro­mote re­spect for hu­man rights, en­cour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion in the elec­toral process, and pro­mote an elec­tion process free from vi­o­lence.

The Prime Min­is­ter was fir­ing back at the in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tion fol­low­ing a re­cent rul­ing in which they found that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and its leader had breached the code of ethics. In fact, the PM had breached the code of ethics twice dur­ing cam­paign­ing for the Au­gust 14 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions, the coun­cil not­ed.

Re­spond­ing to the PM, the chair­man of the coun­cil Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath ques­tioned whether Dr Row­ley would have slammed the civ­il so­ci­ety group if it had found an op­pos­ing par­ty in breach of the code of ethics.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Dr Ra­goonath said, “He could dis­miss it now say­ing the coun­cil is un­eth­i­cal and steeped in bias, that is his po­si­tion. Had we said some­thing about the UNC or the NTA we prob­a­bly would have got­ten ku­dos for it.”

Close sources told Guardian Me­dia that coun­cil mem­bers have re­ject­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment and ex­pressed con­cern with what they la­belled as an at­tack on their in­tegri­ty.

Sources in­di­cat­ed that the coun­cil mem­bers main­tained that they ex­e­cute their role and func­tion “dili­gent­ly and with­out bias”.

The coun­cil in­cludes Dr Ra­goonath as chair­man, Ralph Pe­ter as deputy chair­man, Leela Ramdeen as sec­re­tary, Dr East­lyn Mcken­zie, Dr Olabisi Kuboni, Dr Gabrielle Ho­sein, Dr Bev­er­ly Ann-Marie Beck­les and Prof Carlisle Pem­ber­ton.

Dr Ra­goonath stat­ed that one of the coun­cil’s mem­bers, Imam Im­ti­az Ali died on Wednes­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Ra­goonath, he was an­tic­i­pat­ing the back­lash from the Prime Min­is­ter.

“This is not an un­ex­pect­ed out­come fol­low­ing the coun­cil’s find­ings based on their de­lib­er­a­tions over the last few weeks,” Dr Ra­goonath said, main­tain­ing the coun­cil’s im­par­tial­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Ra­goonath, Dr Row­ley’s po­si­tion on the coun­cil seemed to be an about-turn from when it was formed in 2014.

“Kei­th Row­ley and Franklin Khan were the first two peo­ple to sign on to the code, they were in op­po­si­tion then,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Dr Row­ley to de­ter­mine whether or not he will move to with­draw the PNM from the Code of Eth­i­cal Po­lit­i­cal Con­duct, how­ev­er, there was no re­sponse.

The PM, PNM’s breach­es

The coun­cil met on Mon­day and con­sid­ered two com­plaints that were sub­mit­ted by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) against Dr Row­ley and the PNM.

It said the first com­plaint re­lat­ed to the lan­guage used by Dr Row­ley on the PNM plat­form at a meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do on Ju­ly 15.

The coun­cil stat­ed that in the Ju­ly 15 in­ci­dent, “The UNC claimed that Dr Row­ley’s state­ments were based on a false and un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed al­le­ga­tion which was in­flam­ma­to­ry, di­vi­sive, and had the po­ten­tial of in­cit­ing vi­o­lence.”

The coun­cil said Dr Row­ley did not name any par­ty or per­son, but based on the pol­i­cy pro­pos­al be­ing dis­cussed, it was clear that ref­er­ence was be­ing made to the UNC and its fe­male leader.

“In mak­ing the said crit­i­cisms of poli­cies as ad­vo­cat­ed by the UNC, Dr Row­ley went on to al­lude to events which have not been linked to the UNC, and, as such, those state­ments can be deemed to be un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed al­le­ga­tions, and this is in breach of the code,” it said.

It said con­tin­u­ing this part of his speech, Dr Row­ley, again with­out call­ing any name, but still re­fer­ring to the pol­i­cy pro­posed by the UNC, spoke in deroga­to­ry terms of a po­lit­i­cal leader.

“This is un­ac­cept­able and to that end, he is in clear breach of the clause of the code which reads: Not make false or defam­a­to­ry al­le­ga­tions in print or speech in con­nec­tion with an elec­tion in re­spect of a par­ty, its can­di­dates, rep­re­sen­ta­tives or mem­bers,” it said.

The coun­cil had re­ceived a pre­vi­ous com­plaint on the PM and af­ter de­lib­er­at­ing found that Dr Row­ley used lan­guage that was in­sen­si­tive and in­ap­pro­pri­ate dur­ing a cam­paign meet­ing in St James.

Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance leader Gary Grif­fith had re­port­ed the Ju­ly 7 in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Row­ley to the coun­cil.

Grif­fith wrote the coun­cil point­ing out DR Row­ley’s al­leged re­marks at the meet­ing: “They are go­ing to give a cer­tain race gun (sic) to shoot peo­ple of an­oth­er race be­cause they are say­ing that the crime in this coun­try which we know is across the board, is one race at­tack­ing an­oth­er.”

Grif­fith said the al­leged re­marks were “both alarm­ing and con­cern­ing as such an of­fen­sive ut­ter­ance has the po­ten­tial to cause ir­repara­ble con­se­quences”.

Af­ter re­view­ing the speech made by the Prime Min­is­ter in St James, the coun­cil said it found “the lan­guage used was clear­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate and in­sen­si­tive”.

Mean­while, in the sec­ond com­plaint from the coun­cil of the PNM, ref­er­ence was made to the ad­ver­tis­ing fly­ers of two of its can­di­dates in the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

The com­plaint by the UNC is that these PNM can­di­dates are ad­ver­tis­ing them­selves as hav­ing the abil­i­ty to as­sist or fa­cil­i­tate ac­cess to state-con­trolled grants.

“Two fly­ers were sup­plied to the coun­cil, and while one speaks to ‘of­fer­ing as­sis­tance to the pub­lic’, the oth­er is more bold and trou­bling since, un­der the can­di­date’s name, it sim­ply states “Ap­ply Now–Grants avail­able.”

The coun­cil said that the fly­er goes on to list items such as ‘food card,’ ‘house wiring,’ ‘HDC hous­ing,’ ‘pub­lic as­sis­tance, and many more’ and al­so gives con­tact in­for­ma­tion.

“The coun­cil in­ves­ti­gat­ing the au­then­tic­i­ty of this fly­er was ad­vised to vis­it the cam­paign of­fice of the can­di­date to fol­low up, there­by fur­ther giv­ing the im­pres­sion that one can ap­ply and be af­ford­ed grants from a PNM cam­paign of­fice.”

With the PNM hold­ing the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, the coun­cil stat­ed, these ad­ver­tise­ments give the im­pres­sion that state re­sources are be­ing chan­nelled through the cam­paign of­fices of PNM can­di­dates.

Based on the com­plaints, the coun­cil called once again on Dr Row­ley to be mind­ful of the use of lan­guage in the cam­paign and to “en­sure that its can­di­dates de­sist from giv­ing the im­pres­sion that grants can be on of­fer as in­duce­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly so when such will utilise state re­sources”.

Yes­ter­day Dr Ra­goonath said, “All the mem­bers sat on the coun­cil and came up with the de­ci­sion on Mon­day and came up with what we sub­mit­ted on Tues­day.”

About the coun­cil

Dr Ra­goonath said that the coun­cil was drawn up by mem­bers of civ­il so­ci­ety and is not an arm of the State. He not­ed that while it has no au­thor­i­ty to is­sue pun­ish­ment, mem­bers of the pub­lic are even­tu­al­ly the fi­nal judge.

Among the 20 pro­hib­it­ed con­duct po­lit­i­cal par­ties, coali­tions and their sup­port­ers must ad­here to in­clude; No dis­crim­i­na­tion on the grounds of race, eth­nic­i­ty, sex, gen­der, class, re­li­gion or be­lief, or seek to mo­bilise sup­port by ref­er­ence to race, sex, gen­der, re­li­gion or class, no use lan­guage or act in a way that may pro­voke vi­o­lence; or in­tim­i­date can­di­dates, mem­bers of par­ties, rep­re­sen­ta­tives or sup­port­ers of par­ties or can­di­dates, or vot­ers; or in­vite, en­cour­age or fos­ter ha­tred, re­sent­ment or any form of vi­o­lence as well as not seek to as­sas­si­nate the char­ac­ter of or make defam­a­to­ry com­ments about any in­di­vid­ual, fam­i­ly, pro­fes­sion­al group or sec­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty.

The code of ethics was drawn up by var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the so­ci­ety.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion ob­tained from the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s web­site, the An­gli­can Church, An­ju­man Sun­nat-ul-Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union/FI­TUN, In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T, Methodist Church, Net­work of NGOs, Pres­by­ter­ian Church, Ro­man Catholic Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain, Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, T&T Pub­lish­ers & Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute are sig­na­to­ries to the code.

The coun­cil said that as of Oc­to­ber 2021, 17 po­lit­i­cal par­ties are cur­rent­ly signed on to the code of ethics.

Kam­la: Un­fair at­tack

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion on the coun­cil was not new as he kept in the pat­tern of blam­ing oth­ers and not tak­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty for his ac­tions. She stat­ed, “The coun­cil is do­ing the job they think they set them­selves up to do. If they have giv­en a rul­ing that he dis­agrees with, I think it is un­fair to be at­tack­ing them in that man­ner be­cause the rul­ing did not go in his favour.”

Grif­fith: Row­ley’s job is to di­vide and con­quer

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance Gary Grif­fith, mean­while, said the Prime Min­is­ter’s con­dem­na­tion of the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour was undiplo­mat­ic.

“You feel it is ac­cept­able to state that a po­lit­i­cal leader is a crim­i­nal, you feel it is ac­cept­able to make com­ments that can di­vide a coun­try, you feel it is ac­cept­able to lie and say firearms are be­ing giv­en to one race to be able to at­tack an­oth­er.

“It shows the stan­dard of Kei­th Row­ley, he does not know what it means to be a states­man or Prime Min­is­ter to unite a coun­try. His job will al­ways be to di­vide and con­quer, not this time.”