Rowley An empty man
Published on Feb 11, 2017, 9:00 pm AST
By Ralph Maraj
In last Sunday's column on leadership, I encouraged the Prime Minister to be large of mind and heart. But the very next night, he again demeaned his high office with a disturbing insufficiency. In addition to being predictable and pedestrian on crime and other issues, plain empty, he unjustly chastised women, saying bluntly
, “you call on the Prime Minister to do something about crime; I'm not in your bedroom; I'm not in your choice of menâ€, displaying callous insensitivity and abysmal ignorance on the issue of domestic violence with which this country is now diseased, over 300 women killed from abuse in the last 15 years, 7,000 reported cases in the last five.
For the past 16 months I have suggested Rowley go deep, the country desperately needs it from the Prime Minister. But I also suspect the depth isn't there. For, as a politician, Rowley emerged as the one-dimensional
PNM “rottweiler†and this he essentially remains after 30 years. The absence of evolution produced
his “bedroom†response as he again tried to abdicate responsibility, now by blaming the victim, seeking to exonerate his administration from its failure to stem the growing violence against women.
But we ought to have already seen the bent of Keith Rowley's mind through the images that flow therefrom. Remember when he let loose his depravity, saying of the nation's first female prime minister:
“she knows I love women. She thinks I love any woman. I have taste and when I don't take her on, she on Faris back. And she could jump high, she could jump low, she could drink this, she could drink that, she could bark at meh dog, because I go ignore she kyat.†Columnist Andre Bagoo opined, “the woman is reduced to a vagina. Abominableâ€!
This Prime Minister obviously lacks poetry within, Rowley himself confessing to “scoring low†in Literature at school, suggesting he was not receptive to the study's humanising influence. Consequently, except for that single moment on election night 2015, we have not heard anything inspiring from Rowley during his three decades in politics. Instead, I have already had to chastise him for his language after he became prime minister.
Last year, around the time the world marked the 70th anniversary of the “Iron Curtain†speech by Winston Churchill, Rowley produced a remark demonstrating the infinity separating the two men. Churchill's most moving words came when he assumed the prime ministership of Britain in its darkest hour and said,
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind; many, many long months of struggle and suffering. Our aim is victory, however long and hard the road; for without victory, there is no survival. I take up my task with hope and say: come, let us go forward together with our united strength.†Compare this with what Rowley delivered then to stir the national imagination:
“suppose I go and buy some underwear for my wife and didn't deliver it to her on time and somebody tells the press!†Heavens!
Not long after that, thinking to be profound, Rowley produced another gem at the international anti-corruption conference, attempting philosophy but producing triteness, saying:
“when I was a child, I was taught there was a placed called heaven. But there was a fella called Lucifer who acted in a corrupt manner and had to be expelled from heaven. And I was told he was living here amongst us.†Embarrassing!
Can he help it? Does he know better? One can't be sure, especially when, at a post-Cabinet press briefing of all places, telling the nation of his visit to the doctor to test for prostate cancer, he gave us a verbatim account of a private conversation with a friend who had said tastelessly,
“no man ain't digging up in my bottom like that?â€, most people shocked Rowley deemed it appropriate to relate such crassness from the prime ministerial podium! And the degrading talk has flowed prolifically.
In explaining the absence of a vehicle used by his predecessor, thinking he was being funny, but ending up nasty, he said,
“I am told that vomit is very difficult to be washed out from a vehicle. Even after you shampoo it, the smell is still there. And when you add other fluids to the vomit it is very difficult to clean.†He has also shouted to the Parliament from a political platform,
“I want mi moneyâ€; once suggested, with a certain smile,
he could give women advice on how to “peel cassavaâ€; and claimed virtue on another occasion with, “I have not set my bottom in a helicopter in six months as Prime Minister.â€
Before the recent “bedroom†talk, his latest had come during the local government campaign when he said the number of children he has, “inside and outsideâ€, was none of Kamla's “goddamn business, because as long as Sharon is happy with how much I have outside and how much I have inside, Rowley happy with that! At least what I had outside and what I have inside, they escaped and they are alive.â€
The imagery is of “kyatâ€, “underwearâ€, “bedroomâ€, “bottomâ€, “vomit†etc. Rowley has been raw and degenerate, fuelling the crassness, decadence and superficiality already corroding a society on the brink of falling apart. Doesn't he understand a prime minister's role in the refinement of his country? The man obviously needs help. Is there anybody in his circle who can or dare provide private counsel? I have already suggested he take a retreat, not to Magdalena Grand Beach Resort, but somewhere quiet in the Prime Minister's residence to pursue deep introspection. Dare we hope for an inner awakening? Or are we dealing with a fundamentally empty man.
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