Sunday, September 30, 2012

Guest commentary: Maxie can write what he wants but he needs to disclose all the facts

I think I should apply to Kamla for a job. Not any job. Just the one that's been vacant for about 28 months. Not so, Sister Pena?

You see, like an on the ball seer man I predicted what Maxie Cuffie would be writing about the instant he returns to writing in the papers under his own name. I said he would be attacking the PP government from the getgo. 

He has not let me down because, if you look at what he wrote in his very first column, Connecting the dots to Kamla, Cuffie started off by declaring why he wrote the column was to show the Prime Minister was toe to toe with some unnamed person to put Section 34 into the law books. The evidence he produced? Well, to be blunt, it was pathetic. He failed to connect the dots.

He tries to link Kamla to Galbaransingh thorough Galbaransingh's wife by saying Mrs Galbaransigh was present in the flesh at the Prime Minister's swearing in, and used the opportunity to smile down on her like some guardian angel.

He talks about Carlos John accompanying Mr Volney to his screening; he also makes a recommendation that the PP could give Calder Hart government contracts also, since up to now Calder Hart hasn't been charged with any crime. After saying those things, he begins closing off his story by saying (it's his column, he wrote it, not me, so I'll quote him word for word)

"And most importantly, as Prime Minister, and, as we are being constantly reminded, “distinguished Senior Counsel,” how could she have allowed it?" The reeking sarcasm makes me believe the smirk on his face must be still there. I say he was smirking since he signs off like by advertising himself,

Maxie Cuffie runs a media consultancy, Integrated Media Company Ltd, is an economics graduate of the UWI and holds an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School as a Mason Fellow in Public Policy and Management. Who cares?

Advertisements need to be truthful otherwise consumers would be misled. I'm calling on Maxie to explain why he left out the parts about being married to Hermia Tyson-Cuffie, the Permanent Secretary who actively participated in or condoned the secret siphoning of millions and millions of "we dollars" to slush away to family and friends of the PNM. 

Like for instance,
  • his media buddies Curtis Williams, who get over $100,000 to study medicine (anybody know where Dr Curtis Williams office is?) and Joel Primus, $15,000 and change, to study General Management (whatever that is)
  • or Amanda Soulette $75,000 to study to be a veterinarian (her daddy is Anthony Soulette, former PNM alderman in POS City Council and Personal Assistant to PNM Energy Minister Dr Eric Williams)
  • or Rain Newell-Lewis, almost $200,000 to study International Business Economics (one time PNM Senator whose father was a multi millionaire. Guess where they used to live? Spitting distance of Maxie Cuffie and his Permanent Secretary wife on Lady Chancellor Hill)
  • or Laurel Lezama, $454,000 to study law at the University of Westminster Regents Campus in London England. (She never graduated. Money down the drain. No big thing for bigshots like Maxie to write off. No need for Maxie to mention Mrs Maxie is the one who approved this biggie for the beautiful girl who just happened to be married Louis Lee Sing's son. No big thing if she also was made a government senator by the PNM after she "finished studying" at our expense)
  • or Paige de Leon, $173,640 to pursue a Master's degree (she cut her teeth within the PNM controlled I95fm family and went on to who is gainfully employed as a public relations officer at the Prime Minister's officeAnd that's only a sprinkle of the names.
I'm asking again, why doesn't Maxie focus on the PNM misdeeds with these scholarships? Maybe he thought we forget who he's married to? None of these people who get these secret scholarships pay back anything. 

Paige de Leon has a big position in the Prime Minister Office. I hope they made her sign a standing order to deduct the money from her salary? I don't have a clue where the others are.

It's Maxie Cuffie who is the one that started drawing comparisons with Calder Hart, so I want the Attorney General to go after these people, starting with Maxie Cuffie's wife and Joan Yuille-Williams. Because the sneaky way these taxpayer-funded scholarships were given out, these people no different from Calder Hart.

I hope Maxie doesn't jump up and complain about me employing my constitutional right to free speech to finger his wife? He exposed her to that because he brought people's wives into the picture.

How to sum up Maxie Cuffie? I would say he is the type of material you could only describe as having "manufacturer's defect". Goods with manufacturer's defect does have to be examined from top to bottom so you could tell yourself whether they worth buying. 

No matter how he advertises himself, Maxie Cuffie is of bottom value because according to Iwer, his bottom in the road, a PNM road if you please. If Maxie Cuffie was straight up, two things would have happened, he wouldn't have been afraid to hold the mirror up to himself and he would have been able to think straight and do what sane society has done.

What did sane society do? Well, we
  • agreed that the whole parliament was responsible, because all of them voted for the amended Section 34
  • agreed that what he really meant to say when he said "the buck stops with the Prime Minister" was that he is in full agreement with the way the Prime Minister handled the Section 34 bump in the road
  • agreed that like with any bump in any road, you fix it, and if you can't fix it, you go over it slowly because you don't want to mashup your suspension, but, no matter what, you continue driving
As to the owners of the Guardian, I remember reading somewhere how, when Ken Gordon was still in the media business, Kenrick Rennie blanked a Ken Gordon request for UTC to sponsor a Morgan Job show. Rennie was a big boy in UTC at the time and he real roughed up Gordon and Dr Job too in a letter. 

Based on that, all I can tell the Guardian controllers is that we live a democracy where freedom of speech is a constitutional right. Therefore even people like Maxie Cuffie should be free to say what they wish. 

This does not mean, however, that what everything Maxie Cuffie says should be imposed on the nation by the media since the only people who would understand what he is saying would be those who share his biased point of view.

Ayodele Chieng | Irving Street, Petit Bourg.

No comments:

Jai & Sero

Jai & Sero

Our family at home in Toronto 2008

Our family at home in Toronto 2008
Amit, Heather, Fuzz, Aj, Jiv, Shiva, Rampa, Sero, Jai