Orin Gor­don

One of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s most vo­cal cheer­lead­ers on so­cial me­dia agreed with my Face­book-post­ed com­ment that for­mer PM Dr Kei­th Row­ley had crossed a line in­to misog­y­ny in call­ing the PM “a jamette.”

“Shame­ful stain on our coun­try”, he thun­dered, “(for) a for­mer PM to say such dis­re­spect­ful and nasty things about a par­lia­men­tary col­league.”

“The bile and nas­ti­ness cut both ways”, I re­spond­ed. “The PM, who you sup­port, has de­scribed as ‘eat-a-food filth’ peo­ple whose po­si­tions she doesn’t like.”

Said he (let’s call him Pe­ter): “They are eat-a-food filth.”

Pe­ter is both­ered by Row­ley’s com­ment but un­both­ered by the PM’s de­scrip­tion of oth­er hu­man be­ings as filth. He’s a hyp­ocrite, and he’s part of the prob­lem. A num­ber of the Prime Min­is­ter’s col­leagues in Gov­ern­ment found them­selves in high dud­geon. One by one, they con­demned Row­ley. Their leader has done much to low­er the tone.

I got push­back from the oth­er side. Did I write any think pieces, Gen­na (not her re­al name) de­mand­ed to know, when, she said, “Kam­la and the UNC” had lev­elled a grave charge against Row­ley and his fa­ther?

I don’t do whataboutism, I told her. Be­sides, I’ve a five-year record of writ­ten po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary—and by an ob­jec­tive mea­sure, I’m an equal op­por­tu­ni­ty bouf­fer of UNC and PNM. In gov­ern­ment and in op­po­si­tion.

In an at­mos­phere in which po­lit­i­cal bile is more freely spewed than ever, whataboutism is a com­mon re­sponse. In the com­ments sec­tion of Face­book-post­ed news sto­ries that ask ques­tions of the Gov­ern­ment, their sup­port­ers would state that the re­porter/pa­per said noth­ing when the pre­vi­ous lot was in of­fice. It’s im­ma­ture, in­ac­cu­rate and tire­some. And it gets away from ac­tu­al­ly ad­dress­ing the is­sues on sub­stance.

In the age of Trump, the Sul­tan of Slur, it is hard to get die-hard sup­port­ers to sep­a­rate sup­port for the per­son from the dis­agree­able thing they said or did. They’re all in, like Pe­ter and Jen­na. Not just the en­tire bas­ket of goods. With due ac­knowl­edge­ment to Na­dia Bat­son, the whole blinkin’ mar­ket. Mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment call­ing out their lead­ers is po­lit­i­cal sui­cide. I get that. How­ev­er, Pe­ter and Jen­na sig­nal a cri­sis of syco­phancy.

Row­ley had too read­i­ly reached for misog­y­ny in re­sponse to ex­plo­sive ac­cu­sa­tions of se­ri­ous crim­i­nal­i­ty that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had lev­elled at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment in par­lia­ment.

“I want to say to Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to­day, I told this coun­try be­fore that you’re a jamette,” he said in in­dig­nant re­sponse to the PM’s ac­cu­sa­tions of shady fund­ing of Bal­isi­er House, made un­der the cov­er of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege.

There’ve been a few schol­ar­ly dis­cus­sions about the ori­gin and own­er­ship of the word, but that’s not my lane. Row­ley’s mean­ing and in­tent were clear. Plus, he has shown a misog­y­nis­tic streak. A golf course and a woman both need prop­er groom­ing, he once said, or they be­come pas­tures.

In op­po­si­tion and at the height of the pan­dem­ic, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said that con­tin­u­ing with the Min­istry of Health lead­er­ship team “amounts to pre­med­i­tat­ed, state-sanc­tioned mur­der.”

She re­turned as Prime Min­is­ter with a fair amount of good­will—recog­ni­tion by those who oc­cu­py the nar­row mid­dle that things had got­ten so bad for so long on vi­o­lent crime and the econ­o­my, that she de­served some lat­i­tude in rec­ti­fy­ing them.

She has burnt some of that po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal with her bil­ious­ness on do­mes­tic and for­eign pol­i­cy. The no­tion of prin­ci­pled dis­sent doesn’t seem to ex­ist for a PM who of­ten paints crit­ics of her poli­cies as crim­i­nal, and their crit­i­cisms are dri­ven by crim­i­nal cov­er-up.

The Gov­ern­ment should take ev­i­dence of al­leged crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing to the rel­e­vant state pros­e­cu­tors. Un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed ac­cu­sa­tions (in­clud­ing those aimed at in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors) should not be wield­ed as a cud­gel of con­ve­nience, to—in­ten­tion­al­ly or not —get out of sub­stan­tive­ly ad­dress­ing con­tentious is­sues, or to shut down crit­i­cal scruti­ny.

Tonal­ly, the PM seems to take her cue from the loud­mouth ten­den­cy with­in UNC ranks. The “Small Pin” nick­name for Stu­art Young was lift­ed straight from one of them. Young? We haven’t for­got­ten his sex­u­al­ly-charged taunt­ing of the then-op­po­si­tion leader as she left the cham­ber.

Po­lit­i­cal dis­course is in the pits. We can ar­gue about de­grees, but both sides are to blame.