GILLIAN LUCKY

Par­don the pub­lic ex­pres­sion of my dis­ap­point­ment with a par­tic­u­lar as­pect of the ad­dress de­liv­ered by the Prime Min­is­ter at the clos­ing of the Di­vali Na­gar fes­tiv­i­ties but it is ap­par­ent that the bar for ap­pro­pri­ate con­duct for politi­cians at pub­lic func­tions is set too high.

Those who are blind loy­al­ists of the Prime Min­is­ter and those who wor­ship the ground up­on which she walks will find no fault with her speech be­cause for those per­sons, this ac­com­plished in­di­vid­ual can do no wrong.

But in­fal­li­bil­i­ty is not a char­ac­ter­is­tic as­so­ci­at­ed with politi­cians and so it is im­por­tant that the Prime Min­is­ter sur­round her­self with ad­vis­ers who will tell her the truth as op­posed to whis­per­ing in her ears what they be­lieve she wants to hear.

It is very easy for a politi­cian to get car­ried away with the mo­ment, es­pe­cial­ly in the pres­ence of an ador­ing au­di­ence that recog­nis­es the sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments of our Prime Min­is­ter, but that is no ex­cuse for mak­ing spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to a mat­ter in­volv­ing the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion in the hope of scor­ing po­lit­i­cal points.

In light of the cur­rent so­cial land­scape in which many be­lieve the race card is be­ing used by both sides to gain po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage, it is the Prime Min­is­ter who is ex­pect­ed to re­move her­self from all such al­le­ga­tions of foul play and be an ex­em­plar who is pre­pared at all costs to unite the na­tion. On this oc­ca­sion, the Prime Min­is­ter fell far short of this jus­ti­fi­able ex­pec­ta­tion.

Too much talk

Re­cent ut­ter­ances have proven that this ad­min­is­tra­tion is not pre­pared to take us along the promised path of po­lit­i­cal ma­tu­ri­ty and in­stead is us­ing every fo­rum to make po­lit­i­cal state­ments that can be con­strued as high­ly of­fen­sive.

On the heels of re­marks made by mem­bers of this regime that spoke to the eth­nic com­po­si­tion of the march, which was called by the PNM, came yet oth­er state­ments which sug­gest that pol­i­tics reigns supreme even in a re­li­gious con­text.

More than one gov­ern­ment speak­er made ad­verse ref­er­ence to the at­ten­dance by the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Di­vali Na­gar. The or­gan­is­ers of the Di­vali Na­gar must be alarmed that so cor­rect a pro­to­col as invit­ing all mem­bers of par­lia­ment to its func­tion was met with op­po­si­tion.

Those who found the pres­ence of Dr Row­ley suf­fi­cient rea­son to de­cline the in­vi­ta­tion have raised ques­tions about their in­abil­i­ty to look at the big­ger pic­ture and to put pol­i­tics aside when it is ap­pro­pri­ate to do so.

And what makes it more un­for­tu­nate is that se­nior mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment who were pre­vi­ous­ly viewed as uni­fiers are, based on their words and ac­tions, be­ing brand­ed as di­viders, all for the sake of what? Pol­i­tics?

It is there­fore in­cum­bent up­on those in­di­vid­u­als who feel that they are be­ing wrong­ly la­belled to cor­rect the mis­con­cep­tions be­fore they pay the ul­ti­mate po­lit­i­cal price.

Mov­ing along

It is ac­cept­ed that this ad­min­is­tra­tion has made sev­er­al blun­ders and on each oc­ca­sion the Prime Min­is­ter has urged the coun­try to bring clo­sure to the par­tic­u­lar is­sue and move on. It seems, how­ev­er, that the Prime Min­is­ter has not tak­en her own ad­vice be­cause she made ref­er­ence to the state­ment by Dr Row­ley ear­li­er this year crit­i­cis­ing her ac­tion of bow­ing at the feet of the pres­i­dent of In­dia dur­ing her vis­it to that coun­try in Jan­u­ary.

I ex­pressed the view back then that Dr Row­ley's crit­i­cism was with­out mer­it and that it was un­for­tu­nate that those in his par­ty who know of the par­tic­u­lar cus­tom or tra­di­tion did not ex­plain to him the mean­ing of the ges­ture.

I am al­so aware that some peo­ple de­fend­ed Dr Row­ley's po­si­tion and sought to dis­tin­guish the cir­cum­stances on the ground that the Prime Min­is­ter was not act­ing in her per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty but as head of gov­ern­ment.

But the point re­mains: Even if there is va­lid­i­ty in Dr Row­ley's po­si­tion on that mat­ter, it does not jus­ti­fy the ac­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter to in­ad­ver­tent­ly (be­cause I am sure that she would not have de­lib­er­ate­ly) add fu­el to the fire by mak­ing a state­ment that could be in­ter­pret­ed as im­ply­ing that Dr Row­ley and oth­ers like him have no place in the Di­vali Na­gar.

That her ut­ter­ance, if left un­at­tend­ed, has the po­ten­tial to spark fur­ther con­tro­ver­sy makes it du­ty bound for the Prime Min­is­ter, at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty, to al­lay the fears of those who be­lieve that di­vi­sive pol­i­tics is the or­der of the day.

The cit­i­zen­ry can­not be ex­pect­ed to move on mer­ri­ly when in­ci­dents such as these are oc­cur­ring with great fre­quen­cy and with­out apol­o­gy. Gone are the days when politi­cians thought twice be­fore they spoke, or is it that our politi­cians still give suf­fi­cient thought but are just pre­pared to stand by their state­ments de­spite the of­fence their re­marks may cause?