Country now at an all-time low

Even as our economy has experienced unprecedented economic decline under Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley’s watch, he continues to mask his incompetence by perpetuating the illusion of a “wasteful”, irresponsible and free-spending Opposition.

Rowley and his party are however keenly aware that the PNM can by no means claim to be “innocent” of the wrongs of which he continues to accuse the Opposition, and so his “solution” has been to engage the strategy of “lesser-evil voting”.

Rowley seems intent on advancing a distracting appeal to nonsensical emotive and ethnically loaded rhetoric. He accuses Kamla Persad-Bissessar of spending $350,000 on roti while fending off allegations of having “outside” children by asserting that he is a “breeding” man.

The Prime Minister must hold the people he leads in abject disregard to be willing to allow himself the liberty to spew such uncouth and puerile rubbish.

The PNM today can no longer lay claim to any moral high ground because its record of corrupt thievery has not only been exposed but has indeed been written into our country’s historical record.

The image of an “upright” Afro- Saxon PNM is nothing but the figment of a deluded imagination.

The only way to embed that particular delusion is to advance the countervailing suggestion that those in Opposition are “more” corrupt than the PNM is known to be.

From that debacle has arisen the tactic of “support” for the “lesser of two evils” — a label which PNM supporters have been duped into taking (misguided) pride in when they suggest that one should support their candidate and party.

Rowley so easily and freely shouts outlandish accusations of moral infringements against his opposition while seemingly oblivious to the evil that exists within his fold. He is not “brave” when he invokes the “politics of moral witness”. He is divisively reinforcing ethnic profiling while whipping up electoral support premised on the irrationality of deepening existing social pathology.

Rowley’s rhetoric remains unchallenged by a predominantly Afro-Trinidadian clergy — Christian for the most part — that itself projects “Saxon” values.

It is a clergy that encourages ethnic/religious solidarity by suggesting that the responsibility to vote is a means of individual self-expression. It is a clergy that is nominally Catholic (“universal”) but with an undercurrent of increasing ethnic exclusivity.

While it is happy to advance the cause of individual responsibility and encourage its followers to feel good about themselves, it remains silent on the consequence of their vote for “other” people.

The politics of moral witness for us, therefore, has become indistinguishable from narcissistic self-aggrandisement. Thus the voter is actively encouraged to exercise the franchise as a moral judgment against (the “other”) party/candidates who fail to reflect their traditional values.

The country has reached an alltime low. We have come to the point where those who think they are leaders know nothing about leadership and rely on foreigners for advice and leadership.

STEVE SMITH via email