Those who live in glass hous­es should not throw stones.

Po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns are an ex­er­cise in mar­ket­ing. The in­cum­bent par­ty tries to con­vince vot­ers that it has done a good job in of­fice mer­it­ing a sec­ond term. The Op­po­si­tion does the op­po­site. It ex­plains why mar­ket­ing com­pa­nies get hired and paid big bucks in elec­tion years to shape and man­age the mes­sage and its com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

The 2020 cam­paign is in full swing, mak­ing the me­dia even more im­por­tant and why it finds it­self in Dr Row­ley’s line of fire. There are few ac­com­plish­ments and the econ­o­my is in its fifth year of de­cline with at least three more to fol­low. Apart from the man­age­ment of COVID-19, all the game chang­ers were still­born or dis­cred­it­ed. Per­haps the fer­ries may yet save a seat in To­ba­go. Giv­en the pauci­ty of suc­cess, at­tack­ing the me­dia is a good dis­trac­tion. Rub­bish­ing the me­dia is a use­ful way of dam­ag­ing its cred­i­bil­i­ty and lim­it­ing its ca­pac­i­ty to ask in­con­ve­nient ques­tions.

Trump’s suc­cess in the 2016 cam­paign is a good ex­am­ple. By talk­ing in­ces­sant­ly about po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, Trump es­tab­lished the myth that he had dis­hon­est and pow­er­ful en­e­mies who want­ed to pre­vent him from ad­dress­ing the dif­fi­cult chal­lenges fac­ing the na­tion. By claim­ing that he was be­ing si­lenced, he cre­at­ed a dra­ma in which he played the hero. By por­tray­ing him­self as both per­se­cut­ed and hero­ic, he cre­at­ed an emo­tion­al ap­peal. It al­lowed peo­ple who were strug­gling eco­nom­i­cal­ly or an­gry about the way so­ci­ety was chang­ing to see them­selves in him, bat­tling against a rigged sys­tem that made them feel pow­er­less and de­val­ued.

Mark Lan­dau, a psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas, ar­gues that peo­ple have a ba­sic need for co­her­ence, for things to make sense. En­e­mies pro­vide peo­ple with this sense of co­her­ence. If we can at­tribute many of the ills in our lives to our en­e­mies, then we have a sta­ble set of schemas and ex­pec­ta­tions. We know what to ex­pect, even if some­thing bad hap­pens, and we know who to at­tribute it to. Hence the plat­form at­tack on the press, or the “one” per cent and oth­er racial stereo­types.

Dr Row­ley plays the vic­tim well. He made Patrick Man­ning his “op­pres­sor”, skil­ful­ly redi­rect­ing the taint of cor­rup­tion to Man­ning and the PNM (“cor­rup­tion in the PNM is ten times worse than un­der the UNC”). He did the same thing in the 2015 cam­paign against KPB and the UNC.

That is why he is de­lib­er­ate­ly pro­vok­ing a war of words with the me­dia ob­fus­cat­ing the is­sues, dis­tract­ing from the cur­rent re­quests for in­for­ma­tion, por­tray­ing him­self and his ad­min­is­tra­tion as vic­tims of an un­war­rant­ed me­dia at­tack. Did the me­dia ever ask, or say, he stood to ben­e­fit per­son­al­ly in meet­ing with the Venezue­lans? The me­dia asked for clar­i­ty in the ra­tio­nale for the meet­ings. That is what me­dia is sup­posed to do: to in­form, re­port, ed­u­cate and analyse, and where they are gaps in a sto­ry, to get at the truth.

Me­dia hous­es have al­ways had own­ers even when they sup­port­ed Row­ley’s ac­tions in op­po­si­tion. What is their agen­da and in­ter­est now? Why do they di­verge from his? Dr Row­ley is fa­mil­iar with the law on defama­tion and has pinned the badge of in­tegri­ty to his chest. He well knows that he must give the de­tails as to what are these in­ter­ests, who is fur­ther­ing the agen­da and to what ef­fect and how are they at vari­ance with the coun­try’s in­ter­est. Sure­ly, he un­der­stands the le­gal adage that he who al­leges must prove? In the ab­sence of proof and de­tails, one can­not take his state­ment as hav­ing any weight, even if this is his habit.

What is Row­ley’s agen­da? Good gov­er­nance? The in­ter­est of the peo­ple or hold­ing on to pow­er?

De­spite his in­tegri­ty badge, Dr Row­ley un­hesi­tat­ing­ly at­tacks every­one’s else rep­u­ta­tion with­out ev­i­dence. Yet, as plan­ning min­is­ter, he says he is not aware of every ap­proval grant­ed by the Plan­ning Min­istry? Or, as hous­ing min­is­ter, he was un­aware of the “ad­min­is­tra­tive er­rors” which se­cured a lu­cra­tive plan­ning con­tract for a hith­er­to un­known Chi­nese con­trac­tor? Or that some un­known “pub­lic ser­vant” in­struct­ed to vote against Do­mini­ca’s re­quest for a waiv­er at the OAS? Yet, he is sure that spe­cial in­ter­ests are be­hind the neg­a­tive press? Those who live in glass hous­es should not throw stones.