I always felt a tinge of discomfort when my publisher and mentor Patrick “Choko” Chookolingo termed the PNM Women’s League as “Fat Arse Brigade”.
But I wholeheartedly align myself with the recent views of Professor Selwyn Cudjoe.
Cudjoe wrote a couple of weekends ago that while the Women’s League “has been vociferous in defending its leader, it “has never had a conference or a consultation on parenting, poverty, scholastic achievements, or any of those topics that go to the heart of what ails the society”.
True to form, the Women’s League has darted to the defence of leader Dr. Keith Rowley against withering attacks from no-holds-barred opposition politician Anil Roberts.
The salacious matter pertains to Ms. Sharon Rowley, a lady whose public bearing is one of undoubted class, to add to her professional success.
Ms. Rowley is a likable national personality, not least for her reserved nature.
Ms. Oma Panday had a different personality but deserved no less regard.
But when calypsonians demonised Ms. Panday – “a tramp”, among other obnoxious depictions – the Women’s League never became agitated.
In fact, in 1999, a year of endlessly vile calypsoes, the Women’s League “remained silent on the continuing issue about whether Ms. Panday qualifies for insult, merely by dint of being married to the Prime Minister,” wrote Express’ culture scribe Terry Joseph.
Joseph, a dear friend gone too soon, commented on “a vituperative piece of doggerel” winning “public money and loud acclaim in a national competition for performers of the indigenous arts”.
In that year, the repugnant calypso “The Stage is Mine” trashed Ms. Panday’s character and was rewarded with taxpayers’ largesse in the national competition, no less.
Joseph noted that the despicable song “reflected not only the opinion of the judges but the view of a large percentage of the population, which thinks little or nothing of denigrating Oma Panday”.
Indeed, a slew of contemptuous calypsoes enjoyed repeated encores at calypso tents during that period and the subsequent tenure of Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
In fact, Joseph, like me a great fan of the tents, recalled that any anti-Panday calypso “afforded any singer… guaranteed applause”.
An anti-Panday joke, “no matter how trite, purchased tremendous laughter” and attacks on his wife were equally hailed, “even from women in the audience”.
Around that time, I recognised that long-time fans of the artform had begun staying away from the tents, repulsed that picong had turned to persecution, heckling had become harassment.
I wrote about self-inflicted wounds to the national culture.
Tent operators and the country’s top chronicler of all things calypso argued that critics were attempting to deny freedom of speech.
The calypso tent – a cherished aspect of our national identity – has since gone the way of all flesh, in the face of indifference from the PNM Women’s League and other influencers.
Banter is part of our tradition, but graceless personal assaults – to quote Joseph again – “cheapen the argument for freedom of speech”.
Maybe the Women’s League speaks for rabid, unthinking PNMites, but not a level-headed society that is painfully conscious of the hypocrisy and double standards in the national discourse.
Joseph pointed to that bigotry, in the Women’s League chilly silence when the wife of a then-PNM party official was caught shoplifting in Miami.
Nor has the Women’s League raised its voice on Rowley’s “depraved view of women,” to quote the Network of NGOs from as far back as 2017.
“Rowley must be responsible,” Cudjoe recently wrote.
The PNM Women’s League must cast out the beam from its own eye.
Until it does so, the organisation stands guilty of deceit and dishonesty and enjoys no national credibility.
As for Choko’s depiction, well that’s another matter.
