It makes a pretty photo-op for a politician and would be something to celebrate under different circumstances and in different times. Not now.
The truth is Rowley is taking all the basket and consoling himself that at least some PNM members love him, even if they live in a different country.
What is interesting about this is that the party that Rowley leads cannot even get enough support at home to hold its annual convention, which it has had to postpone.
One top member of the People's National Movement (PNM) told the local media recently that the party is having great difficulty getting delegates together for a convention.
A good leader would have asked himself WHY. And instead of running off to New York to take basket from a small group of supporters he would have tried to fix the problems that he himself created when he decided to campaign against his own leader and his party in the May 24 general election that toppled the Manning government.
Once the deed was done Rowley gathered his troops and muscled his way into the leadership after hounding Patrick Manning out.
Manning has refused to roll over and die and if the rumours from Balisier House are true, a counter coup is in the works.
However, instead of building support for his party and making a genuine attempt to rebuild and broaden its appeal, as he claims he is doing, Rowley is literally running away from reality and allowing himself be to flattered into thinking that he is a great leader and that PNM is a national institution that will rise again "and prevail".
He is doing it by trying to present the new People's Partnership government as the evil one responsible for all the things that he and Manning created - the failure to pay contractors, the Clico bacchanal, the PSA unrest, the smelter in La Brea among others.
The PNM pulled that propaganda in 1987 but it is not working this time.
It's primarily because Rowley and the PNM have no moral ground on which to stand. Having been a part of everything that the PNM represented he cannot now pretend to stand apart from the party. It doesn't work that way.
And there is enough support within the Manning faction of the party to make Rowley uncomfortable at least if not to throw him out. And that explains why he is in New York.
If Manning or his hand picked disciple makes a comeback to unseat Rowley it would be because of Rowley's own incompetence as a leader.
And such a development could well be the death of the party that Eric Williams built with people like Kamaluddin "Charch" Mohammed and others who had a much wider nationalistic vision than Rowley or anyone in the present PNM establishment.
The other primary factor that is hurting the PNM is this: While it lacks leadership and vision, its members are seeing those qualities in the new government and flocking to the People's Partnership (PP) where they are finding that they are being treated equally and with respect by a government that puts people first.
Manning and the PNM had historically operated on the basis of patronage, which ended up hurting the party and the leadership. Rowley, for all the boast of inclusively, has embarked on the same kind of partisan and divisive politics that toppled the PNM from office on three occasions since independence.
The PP has come into office with a promise of clean representative government based on accountability and transparency. The Prime Minister's mantra is "serve the people, serve then people, serve the people!"
She is trying to do that in spite of the attempts by her detractors to show otherwise. One critical factor that makes the PP government stand out from all the other in T&T is that it is not discarding people who happen to be former supporters of the PNM.
That strategy is confounding Rowley and working to undermine the very foundation of the PNM. It might be upsetting some PP supporters as well.
However it is a risk worth taking, especially since the members that make up the partnership have the same vision, which is true to the national anthem - "here ev'ry creed and race find an equal place".
It is a kind of politics that is new to the country and it is working.
So if Rowley really wants to do something for the country, he should get serious about being a constructive opposition leader and work hard within his party to rebuild it by introducing policies similar to the PP, which was able to attract hordes of PNM voters in the last general and local elections.
Running off to New York and getting standing ovations might be good for the ego and present an impressive picture for the media.
The real test for Rowley is whether he can get the same from a PNM crowd back home. And the evidence suggests he can't.
So the best advice for the PNM leader today is to follow the rules of good management: lead, follow or get out of the way.
Jai Parasram | Toronto, Nov. 08, 2010
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