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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

PNM Manifesto theme: Cambridge Analytica

by

2069 days ago
20191122

Kei­th Row­ley’s PNM has mas­tered the art of chang­ing the po­lit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion with dis­trac­tions which they have been able to sell to their sup­port­ers, many who can­not ex­plain just what are the is­sues that they are shout­ing at the top of their voic­es to sup­port their po­lit­i­cal mas­ters.

Row­ley, aid­ed and abet­ted by his in­com­pe­tent and dys­func­tion­al At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and his Min­is­ter for “Just-About-Every­thing,” the very suc­cess­ful fail­ure Stu­art Young, have de­cid­ed that the best dis­trac­tion to ma­nip­u­late the po­lit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion is to res­ur­rect their own pen­chant about Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca and the dis­graced and dis­cred­it­ed pink-haired, nose-ringed or­a­cle Christo­pher Wylie, the so-called whis­tle-blow­er of da­ta theft, who has blown the whis­tle on his own evil ac­tions.

The main is­sue on the PNM’s po­lit­i­cal plat­form right now is their as­ser­tion that the UNC con­tract­ed Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca to use cit­i­zens per­son­al in­for­ma­tion in an il­le­gal da­ta min­ing ex­er­cise in 2013.

This is the PNM’s 2019 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion man­i­festo theme, “Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca.”

The PNM has not been able to pro­vide any ev­i­dence of this but seems hell-bent on keep­ing this is­sue alive to mask their in­abil­i­ty to speak about any oth­er is­sue.

The Row­ley-led PNM is now in the fi­nal year of its 5-year man­date and af­ter spend­ing in ex­cess of $250 Bil­lion, this ad­min­is­tra­tion has ab­solute­ly noth­ing to show the coun­try as an achieve­ment or de­liv­er­able.

From day one, Row­ley’s scan­dal rid­den ad­min­is­tra­tion has been dogged by cri­sis af­ter cri­sis, scan­dal af­ter scan­dal and while it has man­aged to sur­vive one po­lit­i­cal dis­as­ter af­ter an­oth­er, Trinidad and To­ba­go has been plunged in­to even greater un­cer­tain­ty with no clear path to re­solv­ing its grow­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal crises.

This in­car­na­tion of the PNM head­ed by Kei­th Row­ley, has in­deed dredged up ghosts of the par­ty’s past.

Af­ter 50 months in of­fice, Row­ley’s PNM con­tin­ues to chant the same mantra over and over… “Blame Kam­la and the UNC.”

It is in­deed hyp­o­crit­i­cal and lit­er­al­ly an in­sult to the cit­i­zens of the coun­try to hear Kei­th Row­ley say “the peo­ple’s pri­va­cy need­ed to be pro­tect­ed.”

The irony of all this is while the PNM is in over­drive on this is­sue in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion cam­paign, they are silent on the very de­tailed and much pub­lished en­dorse­ments by two Amer­i­can Firms, Ves­tige Strate­gies and Elite Change Inc, both which have pub­licly stat­ed, they were both in­stru­men­tal and as­sist­ed Kei­th Row­ley’s PNM, to se­cure vic­to­ry in the 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tion by de­sign­ing and ex­e­cut­ing the com­pre­hen­sive, na­tion-wide “Get Out The Vote” ef­forts which re­sult­ed in a PNM vic­to­ry. Ves­tige and Elite have pub­licly stat­ed on their web­sites that they built an in­cred­i­bly tal­ent­ed and di­verse team of con­sul­tants, who proved merg­ing cul­ture and da­ta-dri­ven or­gan­is­ing strate­gies, can be the dif­fer­ence mak­er in close elec­tions.

Kei­th Row­ley’s hypocrisy and dis­hon­esty knows no bounds. In 2016, he ap­plaud­ed his in­com­pe­tent AG Faris Al-Rawi who bold­ly de­clared that cit­i­zens have “no right to pri­va­cy, as some peo­ple al­lege ex­ists in this ju­ris­dic­tion, but which our courts do not recog­nise.”

Ap­par­ent­ly, Row­ley, Al-Rawi and Young were not con­cerned then that “the peo­ple’s pri­va­cy need­ed to be pro­tect­ed.”

And per­haps Kei­th Row­ley, a se­nior mem­ber of the Patrick Man­ning-led PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, might give con­sid­er­a­tion as to just how “the peo­ple’s pri­va­cy need­ed to be pro­tect­ed” when that ad­min­is­tra­tion was found to be us­ing two state or­gan­i­sa­tions, the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA) and the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit (SAUTT), to con­duct very ex­ten­sive and il­le­gal, in­tru­sive spy­ing ac­tiv­i­ties by in­ter­cept­ing tele­phone and elec­tron­ic mail com­mu­ni­ca­tions of pub­lic and pri­vate cit­i­zens of T&T be­tween March 2005 and Oc­to­ber 2010.

The PNM’s naked and bla­tant abuse of its po­lit­i­cal pow­er in­clud­ed, spy­ing on the na­tion’s then Head of State, its first cit­i­zen, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, for­mer Chief Jus­tice Sat­nar­ine Shar­ma, for­mer PC James Philbert, Op­po­si­tion Lead­ers Bas­deo Pan­day and his suc­ces­sor, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion politi­cians, the Chief Jus­tice, judges, trade-union­ists, jour­nal­ists and even some of their chil­dren who were all sub­ject­ed to the SIA’s se­cret sur­veil­lance.

Kei­th Row­ley, as a mem­ber of Patrick Man­ning’s Cab­i­net did not con­sid­er that “the peo­ple’s pri­va­cy need­ed to be pro­tect­ed” when that Cab­i­net gave au­tho­ri­sa­tion for the up­grad­ing of in­ter­cept equip­ment at a cost of US$3mil­lion ($20mil­lion) with the guid­ance of Is­raeli tech­ni­cians and Amer­i­can firm Verint which spe­cialis­es in in­ter­cep­tion tech­nol­o­gy.

Row­ley, Al-Rawi, Young and the rest of the PNM are spout­ing plen­ty hype, try­ing to cre­ate new ways to dis­tort, vil­i­fy and drama­tise non-ex­is­tent and non­sen­si­cal is­sues to mask their own cor­rup­tion, mis­man­age­ment and in­com­pe­tence at gov­er­nance.


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