Letter: THA election is great chance to end PNM con game

Ever since May 2010, there's a noxious stream of misinformation being injected into the national consciousness. 

And its toxicity is more virulent and lethal than ever before, thanks to the People’s National Movement under its new leader, Dr Keith Rowley, who has been going all out to have us ignore the dangers the PNM presents and represents.

All the efforts of the PNM since May 2010 have been directed towards one purpose and one purpose only: to obscure and distract from the fact that Keith Rowley is backing the identical agenda the PNM always did. 

Simply put, it’s an agenda whereunder persons elected to public office must not be questioned once they belong to the PNM.

We have seen how okay it is for officials of the PNM to use the courts in order to escape culpability when caught with their hands in the cookie jar. 

We have seen where, under the PNM, heftily-priced government contracts were handed out left, right and centre without any tendering at all. We have seen where, under the PNM, state-owned resources were surreptitiously diverted to privately-owned projects. 

We have seen where, under the PNM, 500%-plus cost overruns were the norm for publicly-funded projects, not the exception. We have seen where the PNM would vote yes to legislation, then turn around and pretend it didn’t.

In the face of such evidence, why in God's name would anyone in their right mind support the PNM anymore?

Supporting the PNM after the fiasco of the nine years of Manning and Rowley and Calder Hart is like losing your pay check playing a rigged game of poker and then playing the same game again a week later because the cards are a different colour.

Rowley and his backers have twisted facts and outright lied like we've never seen before. 

And why? 

Because, if they had to stand on the issues and their factual record, nobody would give them a second thought. The fact is, Rowley and his PNM are exactly on the same page as Manning was. And that page is stained with golden goblets, multi-million dollar drapes and stadium/tsunami shelters.

If Rowley’s PNM were ever to win over the population, it will not be because of facts, context and reality, but because the population swallowed the lies and Rowley brand of the PNM party. 

In other words, it’d be because the population was conned again by the PNM. (In case you didn’t know, this is the essence of how a con works: the con man gets the target to respond emotionally rather than logically. Did I hear someone say, “I is ah PNM till ah dead!”?.)

The upcoming Tobago House of Assembly election is a great chance to bring the great PNM con game to an end in that island. 

We started the process on May 24th 2010 when the two TOP candidates were elected to Parliament. The THA elections again present the opportunity for us to return to the issues of accountability, facts and trust. I pray Tobagonians seize the moment to bolt the doors shut on the PNM.

Anthony Rouff, Herbalist | Tobago, Bon Accord.