Cleav­on Raphael

In the hurly-burly en­vi­ron­ment of elec­toral pol­i­tics does it mean that high pub­lic of­fice must be achieved by any means nec­es­sary?In­clud­ing spread­ing of false al­le­ga­tions and like­wise, which have the ef­fect of trau­ma­tis­ing an en­tire coun­try and dam­ag­ing its in­ter­na­tion­al im­age?

These ques­tions must now sure­ly oc­cu­py the at­ten­tion of all re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens of T&T fol­low­ing the dis­clo­sure by search en­gine Google, that e-mails al­leged­ly in­crim­i­nat­ing se­nior gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, were fake and do not ex­ist.

I do not know what the po­si­tion of most cit­i­zens was when Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in mov­ing a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in the Prime Min­is­ter on May 19, 2013, read in­to the Par­lia­ment record (Hansard), e-mails pur­port­ing to be mak­ing al­le­ga­tions against the PM and oth­er min­is­ters.The al­le­ga­tions are so se­ri­ous I do not wish to re­peat them at this time as they hav­ing been prop­er­ly ven­ti­lat­ed since that day.

I was trans­fixed be­fore my tele­vi­sion tak­ing in Row­ley's con­tri­bu­tion. I was left emo­tion­al­ly per­plexed and be­wil­dered with a gov­ern­ment that was so pop­u­lar­ly vot­ed in­to of­fice on May 24, 2010. How could they have been en­gaged in that kind of con­duct which was com­plete­ly alien to our po­lit­i­cal land­scape?

So dis­turbed was I over this episode I wrote af­ter Row­ley's pre­sen­ta­tion that if the charges were fac­tu­al then the gov­ern­ment had to re­sign, and if the so-called e-mails were false Row­ley would have no choice but to re­sign his of­fice and at least apol­o­gise to the na­tion.

The ding-dong bat­tle be­tween the op­po­si­tion and gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued on its con­fronta­tion­al course up to last week­end when Google on the le­gal ac­tion of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, in­formed the AG and by ex­ten­sion the state, that the whole E-mail­gate con­tro­ver­sy was a com­plete fab­ri­ca­tion.Google's lan­guage was not couched in terms that the av­er­age lay­man could not un­der­stand.

Al­though Row­ley's at­tacks were made un­der the cloak of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege one still ex­pects that when po­lit­i­cal lead­ers speak in the Low­er or Up­per House it is im­per­a­tive, even though they may not be in pos­ses­sion of all the per­ti­nent facts, that care must be tak­en to be ex­treme­ly ju­di­cious in ver­i­fy­ing the ac­cu­ra­cy of what they speak about.Did Row­ley take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tion in this in­stance giv­en the se­ri­ous na­ture of the al­le­ga­tions he was mak­ing in the leg­is­la­ture? Against the high­est hold­er of po­lit­i­cal of­fice in the land?

He not on­ly made the al­le­ga­tions in the par­lia­ment but re­peat­ed them in the pu­bic where par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege does not re­side. Is this the kind of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty the peo­ple should de­mand from peo­ple who are as­pir­ing to hold high po­lit­i­cal of­fice?Now that Google has vin­di­cat­ed the PM the AG and oth­er min­is­ters for any al­leged wrong-do­ing, where do we go from here?

The ques­tion that must now be faced is who were the par­ty or par­ties be­hind in this na­tion­al shame; was Row­ley duped in­to be­liev­ing he was on sol­id ground, that he had hanged the gov­ern­ment's "jack?"Was this plot hatched at Bal­isi­er House and would Row­ley do the prop­er thing and at least apol­o­gise to the na­tion?

Based on the com­ments from PNM func­tionar­ies that it does seem to be forth­com­ing it is amaz­ing that the par­ty's Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Far­ris Al-Rawi had the gall to even think about say­ing gov­ern­ment had planned the Google re­lease to de­tract from the Sen­ate de­bate which start­ed in the Up­per House on Tues­day, deal­ing with the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Amend­ment Bill.

Would you be­lieve such non­sense from Al-Rawi as he sought to put the PNM's spin on what is clear­ly a faux pas of such mag­ni­tude by the leader of his par­ty? I looked straight in­to his face on the tele­vi­sion and he was even smil­ing mak­ing that un­be­liev­able com­ment.

One of the long-term ef­fects of this sor­ry af­fair is that the pub­lic may not want to be­lieve any­thing politi­cians say in this place. If they could get away with mak­ing such po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous state­ments which has far-reach­ing na­tion­al con­se­quences, then heav­en help us all.

If Row­ley per­sists in stand­ing his ground on this mat­ter he, in my opin­ion, would do his cred­i­bil­i­ty in the po­lit­i­cal are­na a lot of dam­age.

I do not know what the AG in­tends to do and some lawyers have quot­ed the law which states that the Op­po­si­tion Leader could face se­ri­ous le­gal prob­lems were the af­fect­ed par­ties to de­cide to pur­sue their op­tions.The bot­tom line at this time is that politi­cians, be­cause of the trust re­posed in them by the peo­ple, must ad­here to sound lead­er­ship prin­ci­ples.