Criticism yes, but from whom? - The Peter O'Connor column

I begin by thanking Ferdi Ferreria for the kind things he said about my Dad and me in his Monday column in Newsday. 

However, he should not have juxtaposed the quotes he took from my February 13th Commentary and thus change the meaning of what I wrote. 

He had also conveniently forgotten the criticisms I had written about Panday and the UNC during 1997-2001. I will not list them here. 

Ferdi’s article tells me that what I have been writing recently is counting where it should, and I appreciate him for that. This is not to say that it did not count before. Why else would Manning have tapped my phone?

But I want to discuss criticism again, for it is certainly a flourishing subject, and the government has been getting more than their fair share of it. 

This is not to suggest that they do not deserve much of the criticism, for they are still struggling to speak and act with transparency, humility, and in consultation with the people. 

I have written before that I consider much of the criticism which the government is attracting to be unfair. In fact, much of it is rabid and bordering on hysteria, if not outright incitement. And much of it is coming from persons who either supported, or participated in the most appalling abuses, incompetence and corruption during Manning’s reign.

I watched Dr. Amery Browne speaking in parliament recently. Now, I grant that he is a good speaker, if truth and “comparison” do not count. 

Had I not known that Dr. Browne was a member of the Manning Cabinet, I would have admired his exhortations on behalf of morality, integrity, transparency and humility from persons in public office. 

But Browne has already conveniently forgotten the master he so faithfully served from 2010, until Master decided to deprive Amery of his Ministry by demitting office in cowardice. But I have not forgotten, and I will not allow the rest of us to forget.

When Manning decided to drop Ken Valley from his ticket in the 2007 general election, he needed a sycophant who would never disagree (as Ken had sometimes done) with him. 

He obviously found his pliable candidate in Dr. Amery Browne. Browne’s constituents wanted nothing of him. “No Valley. No Vote!” they cried. You remember that! 

But a stronger, primitive force overcame their fondness for Valley: the Balisier Tie. Eric Williams had boasted he could put a crapaud in a Balisier tie and win any “PNM Seat”. Manning and Browne proved this to be true once again, and Browne became a cabinet minister in Manning’s obedient, silent, cabinet.

While he sat in cabinet, and in parliament under Manning, he never displayed one iota of the concern for this nation’s morality, nor for Manning’s obvious abuses of power via nepotism, corruption, cronyism, incompetence, protection of wrongdoers, or the UDECOTT scandals. 

So where was this sudden respect for morality, which he is now claiming, hiding back then when the wrongs and abuses were so much worse, and he had the power, as a cabinet minister, to correct them? 

What blessing has been bestowed upon him, that within the space of nine months, he has been converted from a willing and pliant perpetrator of all the wrongs of his master’s reign, to a citizen so concerned that he took to the streets to march against this government’s inability to arrest someone for the murder of little Daniel Guerra? 

And how come he could never march, or show one iota of concern for the murder of little Tricia Henry, or the thousands of people killed by Manning’s “Community Leaders” over the years of the PNM, including those years when he served in cabinet.

And he questions appointment procedures, and the lack of public office appointments? 

Where was this voice of concern when Manning appointed his wife as a cabinet minister, or when Manning vetoed appointment after appointment of persons selected by various Services Commissions? 

Or when Manning harangued Keith Rowley, accusing the latter of corruption, when Rowley had the temerity to question Calder Hart’s activities. Browne was gleefully thumping his desk in parliament in support of Manning’s abuses.

And we also had Silly Karen Teshiera weighing in from wherever she is these days, calling on the PP government to “come clean on the Property Tax”! Well, she never “came clean” on that when she tried to introduce it, nor on her personal profiting from her insider knowledge of the CLICO debacle. But, she believes we have forgotten, so she is biting too.

The PNM are not the only group who have an unfettered right to mis-rule our country, and we must let them know that they are the least of us qualified to criticize.