Bite into the issues

Hitting the $350,000 price tag, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said, “Look at this, if I give everyone of you two roti, I can’t spend that kind of money.” If the “Roti Wars” began as Rowley’s attempt to distract from the political hot potato of recent alleged contract awards to Cabinet wives, they yesterday culminated in the ejection from the Lower House of Princes Town MP Barry Padarath who wanted to see the roti bill.

Otherwise, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar took a personal jibe at Rowley at a recent UNC rally in Freeport. “I do not think there is any greater embarrassment for a person who has more children ‘outside’ than ‘inside’,” she said.

A fiery Rowley responded at a PNM rally in Cocoyea Village, San Fernando.

Claiming Persad-Bissessar to be bankrupt of ideas on local government, he said, “You know what her issue is? That I have more children outside than inside.

You understand? But I want to tell Kamla Persad-Bissessar tonight, that is none of your goddamn business.” Also, adding his bite to the fray was Minister of Public Utilities Fitzgerald Hinds, dubbing UNC “vampires” to be dispatched by a balisier.

He related as saying, “The UNC is badly wounded. We need to finish them out.

Kill them dead.” Predictably, Hinds’ choice of words provoked a prompt and irate outcry from the UNC, which did not regard them as mere banter but rather as a violent threat.

We step in to remind all political parties they had signed up last year to the voluntary Code of Political Conduct, which promotes respect, tolerance, harmony and peace, and decries divisiveness.

The code bans character assassination and criticism of a candidate’s private life or family. It promotes elections being “peaceful” and “free from violence”, with parties committed to “tolerance, harmony and peace”.

Thankfully, tolerance, harmony and peace, despite vocal tremors at times, have always characterised the history of our elections. But the personal attacks, sometimes in a most disparaging light, have also remained a part of the culture and need to stop. It is this extra mile that the framers of the code wanted our politicians to walk.

One of the principal protagonists, Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Harris, did not give the code a shelf life for merely between elections when it was launched.

“We don’t expect to have 100 per cent compliance immediately, even though I suppose all of that would be welcomed,” the archbishop said, “but we do hope that the code would help us so that ten years from now we could look back and say, ‘Yes, our political culture has changed,’ and not a people who focus on the character assassination but on the projects, the ideas, the philosophy and the development which we all seek for our country.” With the Rowley administration’s aim at a total transformation of local government — to undertake among others roles school upkeep, land tax collection and social benefit award — there is enough food for thought for politicians to chew over, rather than descend into debate about vampires, roti dinners and outside children.

With just a few days to go before the polls, who will be the bigger person and end the “nasty” diatribe first and now.