Day PM Rowley met his match
PAOLO KERNAHAN
PRIME MINISTER Rowley finally met his match – a journalist who doesn't back down; someone who is not intimidated by the PM's trademark belligerence.
Darren Bahaw was determined to get an answer out of the PM on whether due diligence was done before the appointment of Reginald Armour as Attorney General and whether Armour had declared his potential conflict in the Piarco Airport matter before accepting the appointment.
“I'm not going down that road with you,” thundered the PM. In fact, it was Bahaw who wasn't going down Rowley's road of long-winded rants with no bearing on questions asked.
When TV6 reporter Urvashi Tewarie-Roopnarine asked if the PM believed the AG brought the country into disrepute when he was disqualified in the Piarco matter in a Miami court, Dr Rowley gave his typical non-answer answer.
He swapped recusal for disqualification like he was choosing ties and then resorted to his usual interminable monologue – UNC orks conspiring to destabilise and embarrass the country and other yarns of opposition villainy.
This is a well-worn strategy deployed by the PM to ascribe any legitimate concerns about his government to the machinations of the Opposition. No other citizens or groups are perturbed by failures of governance.
The PM also unburdened himself of resentment over questions about the AG received through WhatsApp. Unbeknownst to him, the journalist who messaged him those questions, Bahaw, was in the audience.
After the PM's rant about the Opposition, Bahaw yanked on the reins of the news conference, bringing it back to the pressing matter of the AG. He claimed authorship of the WhatsApp questions to the PM and again asked Rowley about due diligence on Armour's appointment.
Rowley countered, “Oh, you admit that!”
Why would the PM use the word “admit” when referencing media questions? It's not like Bahaw sent him a TikTok video of a donkey laughing at a birthday cake. “I advise you don't go any further”' Rowley said pre-emptively.
He then launched into his recollection about a news story Bahaw wrote a lifetime ago, which Dr Rowley believes dented his reputation. “Go and check the archives in the Express...”
Actually, the PM should have followed his own advice. Had he done so he'd have discovered that he misremembered the headline in question. The PM's imagined slight, over the course of 15 years, prompted a dogged refusal to allow Bahaw to finish his questions.
Bahaw respectfully persisted, notwithstanding the PM's bulwark. Interestingly, the PM regularly invokes the word “dignity” although his long-established pattern of obstreperous behaviour is the very antithesis of that word.
Even after the microphone was taken away from him, Bahaw persevered.
He was respectful, both of the office of the Prime Minister and his more important oath to you, the citizen, to get answers from a public servant – something the PM seems to have forgotten that he is.
Here's why Bahaw's persistence matters.
If Reginald Armour can't remember who he was in one of the biggest cases of his legal career, then does he have the cognitive abilities required to hold the second highest post in the land? The Miami court ruling which disqualified the AG also disqualified the law firm representing the State.
The costs of that legal team must be borne by the taxpayer. Who will accept responsibility for this?
Additionally, the PM's sales pitch that the AG's misrepresentation to the court was little more than an inconsequential mistake must face the cleansing qualities of robust inquiry.
“An error was made.” Remember that? It was the PM's defence of former AG Faris Al-Rawi for the infamous legal notice 183 and its seismic impact on the Police Service Commission and the appointment of a police commissioner.
It must be something in the air ducts at the AG's office that's influencing these monumental blunders.
These are the critical issues at the root of the exchange between Dr Rowley and Bahaw. The PM doesn't have the option of refusing to answer questions of national importance. He isn't running a family business or a household.
He is an elected leader who must account to those who elected him. That includes addressing legitimate questions from keepers of the public trust – the media.
When the PM barked at Bahaw, “don't go any further,” he was speaking with contempt to you, the citizen. When Bahaw ignored him and went further, that was a journalist fighting for you, the citizen.
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"Day PM Rowley met his match"