A BAD DAY FOR ROWLEY AND THE MEDIA

PRIME Minister Dr. Keith Rowley is too seasoned and elderly to conduct the people’s business with such an unseemly temperament. 

In a land of grinding poverty, raging crime, declining educational standards, climbing unemployment, and collapsing institutions, the media must simply become more steadfast. 

That is a summary of my thoughts on Saturday’s meltdown by the Prime Minister and the media’s inability to buttonhole him on the burning issues that affect the common man and woman. 

Even in the highest political office in the land, Rowley has made no attempt to refine himself from Patrick Manning’s depiction as ill-tempered; “a raging bull,” the then-Prime Minister described Rowley, in 2008. 

After attending international conferences at a high cost to taxpayers, Rowley returned home to play ball with the media, despite sparse efforts by journalists to prod him on national issues. 

Rowley again applied his intellectual snobbery to skirt the issues, browbeat journalists and escape critical scrutiny. 

The media did itself no favours in quizzing the Prime Minister on a discredited social media assertion. 

The truth is that while the traditional media is going the way of all flesh, social media is crammed with sinister allegations, prejudicial comments, and raw narcissism. 

To a large extent, social media is where good sense comes to die. 

It is where a supposedly intelligent person would publicly celebrate a child getting secondary school placement – a facility enjoyed by 30,000 other students. 

Meanwhile, thousands of other Trinidad and Tobago achievers are quietly scoring international successes without requiring the excessive attention and admiration of social media. 

When last have you seen the successful entrepreneurial class – the one percent – tout their personal and business triumphs on social media? 

Rowley’s history of lambasting the media, in addition to the current generally ill-equipped scribes, has left the country under-served by the fourth estate. 

For example, what, really, does it mean to reinvent the crime scourge as a public health emergency? 

Would that lead to fewer law-abiding nationals being gunned by marauding gangsters with high-powered illegal weapons? 

Would it improve the current deplorable detection rate and the sluggish pace of the judiciary? 

Would it mean that small businesses – 6,000 of which have closed in recent months – would no longer have to invest in costly security equipment? 

Would it get the thousands of malfunctioning CCTV cameras working again? 

Would it seal the borders from illegal drugs and guns and from refugees? 

Rowley’s party in 2015 said that “violent crime is out of control” and that T&T was “the tenth most homicidal and violent country in the world”. 

Since then, the crime epidemic has only worsened. 

Acting police boss McDonald Jacob said in early June he was not surprised that the World Population Review had adjudged T&T as the sixth most violent society in the world. 

 “Bureaucratic resistance to change, the negative influence of gangs, drugs, economic recession, and an overburdened legal systems” were factors identified by the report. 

Would any of those challenges be addressed in reclassifying crime as a “public health emergency”? 

There was also no focus on food security at a time of soaring inflation and warnings by international experts of impending further price increases. 

T&T still imports most of what it consumes, to the value of $6 billion a year, and the domestic “agricultural sector” – well, what sector? 

There was no discussion on the non-implementation of the procurement legislation, a matter that recently drew out the usually reserved business community.   

Rowley used intellectual sleight of hand to numb journalists, capture headlines and lead society into another dead-end conversation. 

The truth is that there is an ever-expanding disconnect between the matters that impact citizens’ lives, and the political leadership, and the media’s overall reporting. 

The media must arise out of their mortal fear of losing government advertising dollars and must also invest in professionals with a penchant for relentless pursuit of the facts. 

And the Prime Minister must surely want to taper off his public service career away from Manning’s portrayal; “we do not accept bullying in Cabinet”. 

Rowley may have out-maneuvered the media and satisfied his fawning political flock. 

But where does that leave a troubled Trinidad and Tobago?