6 May 1999, 874 words
In keeping with Prime Minister Basdeo Panday's mandate to the media to be more positive, I offer in this week when we marked World Press Freedom Day the most positive column I have ever written.
Item#1 - I am quite positive that Dr. Rupert Griffith is one of the most insincere Ministers in the Government. I am not positive that he is the most insincere one, but only because of the stiff competition from his other colleagues.
Evidence of Mr. Griffith's lack of sincerity first surfaced some years ago when he crossed the floor to the Government side, but did not resign from the seat he had won on a PNM ticket. Later, he was appointed Information Minister, in which capacity he recently declared that "there is definitely a link between violent programming being showed and crimes being committed."
Since there is, in fact, no evidence for any such link, and since Griffith said this in the context of controlling news programming at the State-owned NBN and making a veiled threat to do the same to private sector media houses, I took this as proof positive of his rank insincerity. Lack of sincerity, however, is clearly a positive qualification for an Information Minister in the Panday regime.
Item#2 - The most positive thing you can say about Attorney General Ramesh L. Maharaj is that his hair and teeth positively gleam. Despite this, Mr. Maharaj will go down in history as this country's most pre-eminent hypocrite.
The positive certainty about Mr. Maharaj's hypocrisy, which was always strongly suspected, has arisen from his campaign to hang convicted criminals. Before he became Attorney-General, Mr. Maharaj stated quite positively that "Most countries in the world have abolished hanging and found that hanging does not reduce crime" and "hanging is irrevocable, which is one of the main reasons it should not be resumed." I find such a turnaround in an erstwhile human rights champion positively nauseating.
Item#3 - Finance Minister Brian Kuei Tung is positively the worst Finance Minister this country has ever had. He has gotten his Budget estimates wrong three years in a row. The figures from his last Budget didn't even add up. His good partner Ish Galbaransingh has gotten many lucrative Government contracts. Maritime, whose CEO is Kuei Tung's other good partner Steve Ferguson, got a profitable buyout of the Winsure portfolio by Government. Mr. Kuei Tung was recently caught misleading Parliament about a monthly liaison stipend of $15,000 paid to NIB executive director Trevor Romano. The only positive thing one can say about Mr. Kuei Tung is that being his friend has many positive financial benefits.
Item#4 - Dr. Morgan Job undoubtedly has the most positive self-image of any Government Minister. However, few people agree with his positive opinion of himself.
Dr. Job, who has a positively amazing vocabulary, recently told the Form One students at the Roxborough Composite School, "We know who are the little girl strumpets." 'Strumpets' is an archaic word for 'whores'. This is how Dr. Job displays his erudition.
He also said, "Television explains the proclivity to use violence in resolving disputes and television explains the morbid indulgence of children in sexual activity and the AIDS epidemic."
In fact, violence has a strong causal link to poverty and no proven causal link to TV shows. AIDS is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa where they don't have electricity, let alone The Bold and the Beautiful (a programme singled out by Dr. Job who, had he bothered to watch the show before criticising it, would have known that its most recent storyline deals with the need for teenagers to be sexually cautious and, if pregnancy does occur, for the boy to be a responsible father.)
But, when you're as erudite as Dr. Job, you can be positive about all sorts of things without ever needing the slightest shred of evidence.
Item#5 - Since becoming Prime Minister, Basdeo Panday has spear-headed several attempts to introduce repressive measures in our society. And, like every wanna-be dictator in history, he argues that all these measures are for the positive benefit of the society.
He began by trying to control the media with the Green Paper on Media Reform and by calling newspaper editors racist. His administration brought an Equal Opportunities Bill whose Clause Seven curbs freedom of speech. They have increased the bureaucracy and penalties for public meetings.
They withdrew Trinidad and Tobago from the American Human Rights Convention without public, or even Parliamentary, consultation. The Lower House has passed the Service Commissions Bill, which clearly contradicts the Constitution's intent to keep Commissions free of political influence. And, returning to the media, a new Board has been appointed to the State-owned NBN with a mandate to promote positive programming, which means replacing the major newscast with an uplifting live broadcast of the Commonwealth Law Ministers meeting.
The only positive about any of this is that it is positively sinister, save to those persons who are quite positive that the UNC can never do any wrong or, if they do, it's okay.
Sounds positively familiar.
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Baldeosingh