Clevon Raphael

Just as I had an­tic­i­pat­ed, and in­deed ex­pect­ed, the de­bate over the scan­dalous e-mail con­tro­ver­sy has de­gen­er­at­ed in­to the very ob­nox­ious game of po­lit­i­cal gym­nas­tics.In­stead of try­ing to be dis­pas­sion­ate on a mat­ter which should have far-reach­ing con­se­quences for our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic way of life, we are turn­ing the whole thing in­to a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball, which will get us nowhere very fast.

While I un­der­stand the "Ra­dio Gestapo," a phrase coined by Dr Mor­gan Job, to de­scribe my­opic sup­port­ers of the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties who gave their com­plete­ly bi­ased views on ra­dio talk shows, how do you ex­plain that kind of at­ti­tude from peo­ple who are sup­posed to know bet­ter than these zealots?

The uned­i­fy­ing bac­cha­nal be­gan the mo­ment Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Dr Kei­th Row­ley end­ed his pre­sen­ta­tion on the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her three-year-old Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion last week.Like a light­ning rod, the pro­tag­o­nists, main­ly from the two ma­jor par­ties, UNC and the PNM, be­gan snip­ing at each oth­er like pothounds (with sin­cere apol­o­gy to these an­i­mals) on the air­waves.

Each side with their my­opic views tried to out­do each oth­er and both ac­cus­ing each oth­er of guilt in this un­holy mess.It is the usu­al "us" against "them" syn­drome, all in the name of blind loy­al­ty to their re­spec­tive po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties.One can ex­cuse these sim­ple­tons–and please don't get me wrong, as I am re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to those who are "so and so" un­til they die, and who refuse to think with their brains and chose to fol­low their po­lit­i­cal mas­ters who very of­ten speak with forked tongues.

Out of this equa­tion I am ex­clud­ing those who, al­though sup­port­ive of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty, do give in­tel­li­gent dis­cours­es on these shows.How­ev­er, can we re­al­ly ex­cuse those who, in my opin­ion, are high­ly qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als in their re­spec­tive fields (pol­i­tics in­clud­ed), and who some of us look up to be­cause they have some kind of ti­tle be­hind or in front of their names?

These are the peo­ple who get my goat, which very of­ten is not prop­er­ly cur­ried, too. One of the main talk­ing points in this de­bate is that gov­ern­ment should bring in for­eign­ers to sort out this most sor­did chap­ter in our po­lit­i­cal sce­nario.They la­bel these peo­ple "for­eign ex­perts," which to me is a slap in the face of our peo­ple who have time and again proven them­selves sec­ond to none in al­most every field of en­deav­our on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

Space does not al­low me the lux­u­ry of nam­ing these peo­ple who have made us proud, not on­ly in sport but in the sci­ences, lit­er­a­ture and so on.The record is there for even the blind to see and while it is per­fect­ly okay for us to sup­port the po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion of our choice, when we go out of our way to vil­i­fy hard-work­ing pub­lic ser­vants, then I think the line must be drawn ex­cept, of course, when that per­son is de­serv­ing of such ap­pro­ba­tion.

In this con­text I find it very of­fen­sive and down­right in­sult­ing for any­body, es­pe­cial­ly a politi­cian, to con­demn the se­lec­tion of Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mervyn Richard­son to lead the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this e-mail scan­dal.Can any­one tell me what has Mr Richard­son done or has not done to be so pub­licly crit­i­cised by some­one who, as a politi­cian, should know bet­ter than to crit­i­cise a pub­lic ser­vant for less than co­gent rea­sons?

What is equal­ly baf­fling is why Mr Richard­son would be so treat­ed when it has been re­port­ed on more than one oc­ca­sion that the po­lice can hire any kind of ex­per­tise they need–lo­cal or for­eign–to pros­e­cute their in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Or is it a case of tak­ing in front be­fore in front takes you?My whole point is that we should shut our po­lit­i­cal­ly-bi­ased mouths and let the po­lice and who­ev­er they choose to as­sist them do their work so they can get to the bot­tom of this with­out hav­ing to look over their shoul­ders un­nec­es­sar­i­ly.

And by the way there are so many ques­tions that need an­swer­ing in this sto­ry on the re­port­ed bug­ging of the of­fice of the DPP six months ago and which has on­ly now sur­faced.Me­thinks there is a rot­ten fish which stinks to the high heav­ens and one of the ques­tions that must be an­swered is: what did the DPP do when the bug was al­leged­ly dis­cov­ered?See what I mean?

And on the ba­sis of a sto­ry car­ried by the Guardian last week I re­al­ly don't think that any­one ques­tioned by the po­lice in con­nec­tion with the e-mail im­broglio would be so fool­ish as to refuse to co-op­er­ate with the of­fi­cers.The rea­son is very ob­vi­ous.