By Stephen Kangal
May 01, 2019
It is patently clear that Prime Minister Rowley grabbed the quite innocuous, viewed from a local context, but attention-attracting Sat Statement and attempted to clothe it with the now infamous Calcutta Ship robes geared to arrest the declining support for the PNM in Tobago from the rise and rise of the Duke factor.
It was engineered to achieve the same electoral result as Sandy’s 2013 Statement and to nip the incipient electoral fortunes of Minority Leader Watson Duke in the bud.
PM Rowley did not see it fit to assess the statement of Sat carefully as being made by a national/organisation protected and legitimsed by Articles (4), (e) and (i) of 1976 Constitution. He proceeded to derive cheap maximum political mileage geared to shoring up the two crucial Tobago constituencies in the 2020 General elections that now appear to be increasingly in doubt.
In addition to the Tobagonisation of the Sat view there is incredible talk of building a Roxborough Hospital against all odds. The PNM rubbished the value of the modern Couva Children’s Hospital saying it was for their (UNC) people in Couva and not all of T&T as a specialized children care facility.
The Road to Toco is for the people of Tobago and Toco.
The sin committed by the PNM in denigrating that Hospital for Children and playing political games with its commissioining will haunt it as an albatross around its neck because God does not sleep where children’s welfare is concerned.
The exaggerated response by Prime Minister Rowley of the intervention by Sat was such that Police invaded the Jagriti (CBS) Studios to gather information pursuant to a potential charge of sedition without the due diligence being undertaken. It brought the TTPS into odium and disrepute. GG’s conduct towards (soorhawaying in Bhojpuri) Buju accorded more importance to the concerns of the people of Jamaica than of us in T&T.
Rowley himself admitted that he was reading the Jamaican newspapers’ reports and pandering to them with little concern for T&T.
Seditious behaviour!
This is the most handicapped, juvenile, divisive and arrogant government that T&T has ever witnessed
While I do not support the PNM government for a host of reasons, there is no way that I would forget the naked corruption during both the Basdeo Panday and Kamla Persad-Bissessar-led UNC governments. You have not advanced a justifiable reason for anyone to support the UNC. As a matter of fact, this article in defence of Sat Maharaj, who has said much worse in the past, shows that the base of the UNC cannot be trusted. Any future UNC leader needs to do more to distance herself or himself from the Kangals of the party.
Please provide some details of that ”naked’ (quite visible and documented)corruption that you are privy to because after 4 years the GORTT that has access to all information has not reveled that corruption that is so familiar to you I see that without any shred of evidence you are stereotyping Governments led by an Indian quite oblivious and quite conveniently so of the PNM record from 1956 to 1986. I am not campaigning for the UNC. I am looking at how simple information can be exaggerated for advancing a political agenda in Tobago You farce and outa place to tell the UNC base what they should do with your insularity. I suppose you can trust Rowley’s defence of Faris in the One Alexandra and the Cumuto gun range infraction of the law by a sitting AG.The article w was about Tobago’s productivity- not the UNC.
You are not campaigning for the UNC??? Brother Kangal, you had me fooled all along. You could have had me charged for libel or slander. I only took a chance to read this article.
Pray tell, Sir, what is Faris guilty of regarding the “Cumuto gun range infraction?”
Kangal, you have got to be kidding. I could name a few that are well-documented and some that are still before the courts today. I would leave that there for now. “…stereotyping Governments led by an Indian”? That is your idiotic spin for talking about corruption under the UNC. Everyone can comment on any political party and their base; they are all public. You are free to continue denouncing the PNM; I have quite a few concerns about them too. If the UNC wants my support, there are things they must do to get it. For now, I am addressing the UNC that you are campaigning for and the implicit racism that you are defending. You obviously have no problem with Sat stereotyping Tobagonians.
Sat spoke of some of the 40% employed outside of the THA and before this Charles, Pemberton and Webster Roy spoke in the same vein. He did not brand all Tobagonians but Rowley put this spin on his word for political mileage