A TACIT REBUKE?

Was the change in seating arrangements in the House of Representatives, placing Minister of Works, Franklyn Khan, next to Prime Minister Patrick Manning, which meant that Minister of Planning, Dr Keith Rowley was moved further down the pecking order, a public rebuke of Rowley for his COSTAAT recruitment gaffe? Rowley had represented in the House the position that Government was not being discriminatory in its policy document’s reported targetting for admission by COSTAAT of “Afro-Trinidadian males” — ages 17 to 24. Instead, Rowley defended the document and charged that Afro-Trini males were under performing and that  Government had a duty to treat those problems. Both the expression of intent and Dr Rowley’s insisting that this was a policy position of the People’s National Movement Government, especially in a multi-ethnic society as is Trinidad and Tobago’s, was gauche. Quite correctly, the reported policy position of the Government was attacked by Opposition MPs, in terms of such racial overtones that added to Rowley’s ill-choiced comments drew the admonition on Monday, last week, from House Speaker, Barry Sinanan, that all race talk in Parliament should be ended.
 
Government, Opposition Chief Whip, Ganga Singh, had advanced, prior to the Speaker’s call that the Government was offensive in approaching the issue from the position of Afro-Trinidadian male under-achievement, rather than one of overall male under-achievement in the country. On Thursday, Manning, at his post-Cabinet Press Conference, pointedly distanced the PNM Government and himself from the position adopted by Rowley (as well as that of Science and Technology Minister, Danny Montano) on the issue.  The Prime Minister insisted to assembled media representatives that the reference to “Afro-Trinidadian males” in the policy document had been an error, and not the policy position of his Government. Manning quoted from last year’s document on the topic, pointing out that it had made no mention of the offending phrase. Whoever put in that phrase has given the Opposition more ammunition to keep the racial talk increasing in heat.
 
The seating rearranging move in the House was clearly instructive.  It has been advanced that the new arrangement, effectively upgrading Khan, had been as a consequence of his recent election to Chairman of the Party. Khan’s elevation in the House pecking order of seating arrangements, from a place on the back bench to the right hand of the Prime Minister, coming as it does immediately following on Manning’s public distancing of himself from Rowley, does not come over as mere coincidence, and ipso facto unrelated. Rowley’s defence of an embarrassingly indefensible position may have unwittingly cleared the way for other action by the Prime Minister with respect to the Planning Minister, who has earned the reputation of coming to debates in Parliamentary, with well researched material, to rebut points advanced by the Opposition. On Monday last, he stumbled. Does his being shifted from literal pride of place in House seating arrangements mean that it was an intended signal by Prime Minister Manning that his Planning Minister had fallen out of favour, and would be a part of Manning’s already announced around the corner Cabinet reshuffle?