Dazzle them with bull!

Dr Keith Rowley, the Hon. MP for Diego Martin West, finally spoke at the launch of his campaign in his constituency last Thursday night.  You can read about it here, and view the video here.

Dr Rowley delivered a speech that was as fiery as folks expected.  Prior to his launch, I had a number of questions I wanted him to answer publicly.  His speech, unfortunately, only answered one of them: why did he become a PNM candidate in this general election when he was so spectacularly demoted from Cabinet - and subsequently vindicated by the evidence uncovered in the Uff Commission of Enquiry?

His answer, which became the event's leading sound-bite, was:

"When a ship goes into battle that is no time to throw the captain overboard.  I am a sailor on PNM’s ship!  I know what my duty is!  It doesn’t matter what shape the ship is in.  The battle cry is: 'don’t give up the ship!'"

This implies that Dr Rowley put personal grievances aside - some of them extremely grave - in the interest of returning the PNM to government.  Though the analogy was clever, was that really a good enough answer?  It's like when the Prime Minister refused to participate in election debates because he felt there is nothing in it for the PNM.  Both answers start from faulty viewpoints; it's not about the PNM, it's about Trinidad and Tobago.  The crew on the good ship PNM might be concerned about their immediate condition, but this general election is to decide who best to defend and tend the larger, more important land mass of Trinidad & Tobago.  This is not an internal PNM party election.  So, to extend his analogy, why should we landlubbers stick with a damaged ship run by a dodgy captain?

Hopefully, Dr Rowley would answer the rest of my questions satisfactorily by 23 May 2010, including:

To return to Dr Rowley's fiery speech last Thursday night, if you take the names and faces out, the logic of what he said remains extremely dodgy.  Consider these four examples:

• When I saw wrong being done, I blew my whistle privately and publicly. This gives me unsurpassing intergrity. Nevermind my own leader and colleagues put me on the naughty backbench.  And publicly vilified me with trumped up charges that were proven wrong.  I have so much integrity it makes up for the lack of integrity of everyone else in my party's Cabinet.
• One of the reasons we haven't been able to manage crime is because we haven't been able to hire a Commissioner of Police. The Opposition failed to support our package of bills, which resulted in us having to advertise abroad for a CoP. So it's their fault. Nevermind that it was our side who vetoed the candidate proposed by the PSC in Parliament for reasons that had nothing to do with the Opposition.
• When I criticise my colleagues in Parliament, that is a backbencher talking to a Government in the best traditions of Westminster!  Nevermind our record of conveniently ignoring other honourable Westminster traditions, like resigning after years of shameful non-performance or rooting out corruption with the haste the public expects.  Or failing to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests or answering the Opposition's questions in Parliament within a reasonable time-frame.
• When a ship is going into battle, that is not the time to ditch the Captain. Now is not the time to punch holes in the hull. Nevermind the ship's rusty and already listing. Nevermind the Captain taking such a ship into battle royale almost three years earlier than needed.  With a few anchors dragging behind, including a big one that I warned them not to borrow from SS Corruption. With half the crew new.  And only two crew members from the last time we drydocked in Nov 2007. Follow our Leader - there'll be time enough to drydock and court-martial (him?), if needed, after 25 May 2010.
• Don't vote for the Opposition because they say our Leader must go.  They haven't yet said why their party deserve to lead you.  In fact, when you voted us in to replace them in 2000/2001 on the same basis - purely to halt corruption, but we never said how - two wrongs don't make it right.

Dr Rowley made some successful arguments, the best of which, to me, is that the Opposition so far hasn't adequately outlined why they deserve to be in government.  However, I'm wondering if folks feel Dr Rowley's is so full of integrity partly because the rest of his colleagues in Parliament seem so empty of it.  The folks who were clapping with glee at the end of Dr Rowley's performance on Thursday night may, on analysis, have been too dazzled to spot the bull or feel the back-handed slaps.