trinidadexpress.com Editorial
Opposition Leader Keith Rowley, having condemned a “campaign of distraction†by the People’s Partnership, may well have launched his own such campaign, with powerful early effect. The Government’s campaign, he charges, is meant to divert attention from “very important matters†and “very serious issuesâ€.
In a single address last week, however, Dr Rowley won lingering headline attention for utterances nowhere related to the important and serious issues of state qualifying for exposure on pre-election platforms. The PNM leader noted that, from his hour-long address in Brazil, just some compelling sentences had been highlighted. But a practised platform performer like him could hardly profess surprise at this coverage outcome in mainstream and other media.
Indeed, readers and other audiences are entitled to conclude that Dr Rowley consciously sought the effect that his most-quoted, and now widely familiar, words have created. The Brazil PNM crowd cheered him on, and Camille Robinson-Regis, speaking for the party’s Women’s League, defended as mere “picong†and “banter†his unrestrained language targeting the Prime Minister.
Surely, however, the PNM leader, with ambitions to be the next Prime Minister, should do more and better than to play to the gallery of his own supporters. It would be woodenly insensitive of him not to recognise that “she could bark at meh dog, because ah go ignore she cat!†gives offence to a national constituency far wider than his own gung-ho cheerleaders and party-line apologists.
He may discount the “righteous indignation†expressed by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and related People’s Partnership voices. But he should not underrate the disappointment keenly felt by citizens observing that a leading contender for highest national office would so drag political discussion and debate in the mud of discredit and even degradation.
Challenging the Prime Minister to present a candidate for San Fernando West, Dr Rowley disconcertingly adopted imagery of physical violence: “Bring him! Bring her! Is licks in yuh waist, licks in yuh face!†Without seeing this as an incitement to actual violence, citizens must, nevertheless, identify the Opposition Leader with a dangerous tendency toward uncaring looseness of language.
Compounded by his refusal to express regret for any offence caused, the effect could induce political opponents, in their turn, to express themselves in like manner. All parties presumably in the race last year signed to a Code of Ethical Political Conduct, but Dr Rowley has failed to show himself taking any high road in displaying observance of the code’s provisions.
It is for citizens and civic society to hold all parties to their obligations undertaken by signing the code. Certainly, politicians seeking leadership positions must be aware that they will be critically scrutinised for adherence to those obligations, and to meeting the requirements of common decency, in word and deed.
