http://www.trinidadexpress.com/commentaries/Double-standards-in-dis-PNM-country-293537261.htmlValid points raised here, may have been viewed a lot differently if it was the other way around.
Both parties, PNM and PP need to stop worrying about trivial things. Mudslinging going to be at an all time high this election
Double standards in dis PNM country
By Capil Bissoon
Story Created: Feb 22, 2015 at 10:21 PM ECT
Story Updated: Feb 22, 2015 at 10:21 PM ECT
If at Carnival or any other occasion someone were to wine behind the Prime Minister and were she to respond, what would the country have said? What would the PNM and Keith Rowley be saying today?
I can just envisage the headlines, “Disgraceful behaviour by the PM, unbecoming and shameless,” “No wonder we are a lawless society”, “Major letdown to all females in our country”.
The attacks would have been fast and furious and with full force as I said last week. The Inter Religious Organisation would have likely gone on record condemning her indecent behaviour. We might possibly even been hearing from our Archbishop and other church leaders on the moral decline of a country whose leader could bring herself in full glare of the public to “ramajay, gyrate and misbehave” on a child.
We would have read about child abuse, the responsibilities of adults in our society and the need to be our children’s keeper. The uproar might have even forced a premature election.
But this is PNM country. One law for the PNM and another for everybody else.
The PNM hypocrites are coming out of the woodwork to defend the indefensible.
What they are saying essentially is that it is absolutely OK for a 65-year-old man, an aspiring national leader, to wine up in a sexually suggestive manner on a teenage girl who is even too young to vote. “Dat is we culture and anything goes in we culture, so what is all the fuss? Dey too farce and outta place.”
That may be PNM culture but it is not mine nor is it that of the hundreds of thousands of decent, intelligent citizens whose views apparently do not matter.
Could you imagine such unbecoming behaviour from Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper? Or Australia’s Abbott, President Obama or the Queen of England? No wonder Singapore’s Lee Quan Yew said we have a Carnival mentality, which unfortunately has pervaded too many aspects of our lives, including our political lives. But in PNM country there is nothing wrong with a female foreign minister putting her hands, suggestively in my view, around the waist of President Obama who was in our country on an official visit. According to PNM wisdom, Mr Obama must know that this is PNM country.
What would be the hue and cry today if our PM had made unsubstantiated accusations, as occurred in “emailgate”, without the necessary due diligence.
What would the PNM have said and done? Martin Daly, Selwyn Ryan, Roy Mitchell and Winford James would be preaching we are a nation of laws, a country of evidence, and for a democracy to function there has to be minimum standards of evidential practice.
But this is PNM country and Dr Rowley can get up one morning, ketch a vaps, go in our distinguished Parliament and say whatever he wants, or in this case whatever is handed to him, or placed in his mailbox.
Only in PNM country is it right and proper to withhold important, pertinent and relevant information from the President especially if it involves the appointment of someone who many hundreds of thousands of UNC supporters believe to be suspiciously too close to the PNM and Keith Rowley.
Using the same PNM logic, it is now morally right to withhold important information to the Board of Inland Revenue (BIR) regarding our revenue status especially if the BIR did not request the information. Or to withhold information concerning my terminal illness if I am being considered for an important official position in the country; or to withhold information that my degrees are honorary. You think it easy.
If the Partnership Government had no vision, plans and policies in this campaign to take this country forward what would they be saying? We all know from scriptures that “where there is no vision… a people perish”.
But this is PNM country, where calypsonians see absolutely no hypocrisy in every last man, woman and child on their PNM stage pounding the UNC and not a single word, “not a funeral note”, could be heard against Keith Rowley.
And why? Because all our present crop of calypsonians are closet PNM people. Most do not even feel the need to hide their political sympathies because “dis is PNM country”.
I believe it is a moral shame for UNC taxpayers to be funding these blatant, unbalanced and hypocritical attacks on their government in the name of “we culture”.
This election provides a choice between two leaders and two visions for taking us forward. I am eternally grateful that each of us has only one vote.