ROWLEY’S POLITICS OF FEAR

MAXIMUM LEADER Keith Rowley has turned to sinister politics of fear and intimidation as his incompetent government loses more and more favour with the masses.

Rowley is howling angrily at perceived critics and terrorising commentators, as crime, poverty, floods, bad roads, and other horrible ills sweep a tortured Trinidad and Tobago.

The Prime Minister’s hour-long public diatribe against Gary Griffith, the best-performing Police Commissioner in modern T&T, is a raw indication of the panic and terror that walks along the corridors of national power.

That is taking place against the backdrop of a crime rate that has turned the once-peaceful T&T into the most dangerous non-war society in the entire world.

The expose of bribery to coerce opposition politicians to join Rowley’s dying regime reveals how disastrously the once-powerful People’s National Movement has fallen.

The explosive report must be investigated by the police service.

PNM founder Dr. Eric Williams had ensured that defectors serve at least 12 months in the PNM’s camp before being considered to face the electorate.

Scrambling for candidates, Rowley is fielding a pick-up-side that includes aspirants who merely dusted their feet from rival parties.

In addition, one day the best-paid officer in the Opposition Leader’s office was attacking the government’s economic policies, and the next he was being heralded as the future of the PNM.

Blatant ethnic gaslighting in this diverse land is now a standard feature of the PNM campaign platform.

Thankfully, this is being rejected by the mass of “sufferers,” who “only want to know where the next food coming from,” to quote the insightful Black Stalin.

The expressed unity among the masses to rescue little Jenysa Murray once more illustrates that the people are ahead of their leaders, as David Rudder once alerted us.

All of that is in a scenario in which the government is undermining independent institutions, with threats to scrap constitutionally-enshrined service commissions.

The all-important Elections and Boundaries Commission is being undercut while Rowley has refused to invite independent observers to oversee the hotly-contested Local Government election.

Other agencies are either overrun by PNM operatives or are being wrecked by dysfunction and decay.

While Rowley spews venom, the quality of national life continues to decline, with one-third of the population under the poverty threshold, the gulf between rich and poor widening, and the middle class disappearing.

Many are migrating to societies where they could feel relatively safe, the public sector is efficient, there are job opportunities, and their children could fulfil their potential.

In T&T, they have to endure Works Minister Rohan Sinanan casually dismissing devastating floods as a creature of the rainy season.

They must face a wretched public health system, with extensive shortages of medicine even with a $61.4 billion national budget.

At groceries, the prices of staples have gone up by as much as 100 per cent since 2016, while wages have been nudged by only four per cent.

Vulnerable single mothers have never had it so rough.

While Rowley and his associates inflict a culture of political fear, there have still not made any meaningful efforts to wean the one-horse pony economy away from the free-falling energy sector.

The tactic of fear-mongering is clearly having an impact, leading to the stony silence of vital stakeholders, including labour, business, church, academia, and non-governmental organisations.

The journalists’ representative body is indifferent even as members are cowed, and an election watchdog organisation is looking the other way, probably fearful of victimisation.

The PNM’s clear intent is to impose an authoritarian tone upon  LG campaign and to shut up civil society with it creepy machinations.

All of this is being drenched with tribal scare tactics, seeking to manipulate the electorate’s anxieties and mute their serious concerns about the state of the land.

Trinidad and Tobago must stand solidly against Rowley and other political elites dangling alarm and confusion before them and must insist upon an honest campaign of specific plans to lift the condition of life of all nationals.

Society must demand that misinformation, duplicity and the ominous politics of fear are not normalised in our national discourse.

This shameless strategy has no place in modern, democratic Trinidad and Tobago.