Words and other messages - the Peter O'Connor column

Last weekend the papers were full of Opposition Leader Keith Rowley’s calls for (among so many other things), an end to the state of emergency. 

It seems that few people actually read what he said in this almost daily rant and fulmination against everything that the PNM failed to do in their nine years at the helm. 

I have charged the media with never, yes never, questioning Rowley and his pack as to the veracity of the claims they throw out. Maybe the media is just worn out with attending the almost daily PNM summons’, and have so lost interest that they simply publish them as they get them.

What is clear is that no reporter ever questions Rowley, Hinds or Browne on the sources of their startling revelations and alleged exposes. 

So today’s startling revelation gets shot down by facts and documentation issued a day later by the Government or some government agency. This is how it was with the allegations of the cost and source of funds for Kamla’s house, the allegations about racial quotas in our embassies in the USA and the continuing claims over who is doing wrong in the PP Government. 

It is hard to believe that all of this noise is coming from a PNM which was totally corrupt, incompetent and riddled with nepotism.

But Rowley’s ranting of just over a week ago contained words far more significant than his allegations about WASA land and his whining of how the Government was being spiteful and neglecting Diego Martin. 

Mercifully, I did not have to endure his tirade, but am guided by what I read in the newspapers. But here was Rowley, demanding once again that the state of emergency be ended, because the goals had been achieved!

He said “that intervention (the SoE) has definitely outlived its crime fighting usefulness ...”, and went on to acknowledge that crime had been reduced and guns had been seized. 

This clearly shows that the SoE has “worked”, in terms of the reasons given for the declaration. Therefore, Rowley is acknowledging its success! 

Where Rowley differs from the Government, and indeed myself and apparently most of the population, is that because of the success which he has acknowledged, he claims that the SoE should now be ended. He wants to return to the “state of normalcy” which existed prior to the declaration.

Well, we all know what was that state of “normalcy”. It was the ongoing murders, robberies and gang wars which were being sponsored by the PNM government, using URP and CEPEP monies for the gangs to fight over. 

I do not accept that conditions today warrant the ending of the state of emergency at this stage, notwithstanding Rowley’s acclamation of its success. I have called for a SoE against the mounting wave of crime since 2003, and persons far more eminent than me have also done so. 

I am advised that a prominent member of the previous PNM government, on being told of Ken Gordon’s recommendation for a SoE, stated that while it was probably warranted, it would not be implemented because the PNM “would never move against its base support”!

What message is being sent by those words? I leave that to you to ponder, while I get permission to state my source for it. But it tells us a lot about the ongoing relationship between the PNM and the gangs.

However, I want to meet Rowley half way! 

I am joining calls for Government to remove the curfew restrictions at this time, and to let people move freely at night. There is a huge constituency out there of small businesses, service providers, entertainers and fishermen, who have no cushion to survive the closure of their income streams. 

I believe that the awareness of the SoE, and the increased police and army patrols, has reduced much of the crime. The worst criminals can work “around” the curfew restrictions. The bona fide night entrepreneurs cannot. 

It is my hope that by the time this is published, the curfew will have been removed, on a trial basis, to allow that portion of our society, those who work and play at night, to carry on with their lives.

I am appealing to all citizens, especially the corporate sector and their propaganda arms (the advertising industry), and the entertainment industry, to begin to “temper” their messages to encourage a more benign society. 

Currently, too much of our advertising and music comes across in praise of violence and aggression. The creativity of our entertainers and advertisers can, I believe, change our attitudes from aggression to relative harmony. And this should be the mission for their messages.