Wajank Rowley’s can never understand that diplomacy requires listening to the views of all including friends, enemies and all in between. Countries have neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies. They have permanent interests…
Mia Mottley understands this, not wajank Rowley.
Last Saturday, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley launched another unwarranted verbal attack on Naparima MP Rodney Charles and called on him, once again, to apologize for dining with a “racist” French parliamentarian while he was T&T’s Ambassador at the United Nations.
What arrant nonsense!
At the same time Rowley was attacking MP Charles, US President Biden was holding extensive discussions in Warsaw with the Polish President even though they are miles apart on policy issues.
Rowley attempted to shift the conversation from the fact that on the global stage he is not in the same league as PMs Mia Mottley and Ralph Gonsalves or VP Bharrat Jagdeo to an issue he has been harping on for almost ten years about a luncheon meeting with Marine Le Pen, the Leader of the Nationalist Party in France and an elected Member of the EU.
Le Pen was in NYC talking to diplomats and leaders after becoming her Party’s Leader.
“She was not able to meet with a single diplomat in New York, except Rodney Charles who agreed to have lunch with her… I found that to be offensive, I continue to find Rodney Charles (to be) a person to apologize to the people of T&T who sold out our public image for a plate of food,” he said.
What Rowley defines as being “offensive” says why our country is so irrelevant on the global stage. Rowley clearly does not understand that global diplomacy requires interaction with and listening to the views of all.
He really needs lessons in global diplomacy from PM Mottley.
Decades ago former US President Nixon held many meetings with his sworn enemy, Chinese President Zhou Enlai. That is how diplomacy works.
Further, Rowley does not accept that truth has one version.
He has been continually corrected that the meeting was not between Charles and Le Pen but one which included 18 UN Ambassadors, including St Vincent and Grenadines UN Ambassador Camillo Gonzales, who is now that country’s Finance Minister.
Camillo Gonsalves is the son of Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves.
Is Rowley now setting the stage for a row with St Vincent and the Grenadines?
His penchant for misleading the population with half-truths, outright lies and misrepresentations have been continuous and outrageous.
It was Keith Rowley who stood up in Parliament in 2011 claiming that on a visit to our NYC Consulate, he was told by staff that (then) AG Anand Ramlogan had visited the mission and remarked about the ethnic composition of staff and that he (Ramlogan) would fix it. It was later confirmed by the Consulate’s Senior Foreign Service Officer that neither Ramlogan nor Rowley had ever visited the mission.
Why do you lie so bold facedly, Dr Rowley?
It was Keith Rowley who stood up in Parliament in 2013 and accused the sitting Prime Minister and other Ministers of being involved in a sinister move to undermine the judiciary, the DPP’s Office and conspiring to murder a journalist.
Rowley is a consummate liar.
Suffice to say, after years of investigation, both the TTPS and the DPP found there was no evidence to substantiate Rowley’s most egregious claims.
It was Keith Rowley who in 2014 called a press conference claiming that someone in the Persad-Bissessar Administration asked for a $40 million bribe and when the bidder could not entertain it, the project was shelved. The CEO of state-owned CDA denied that there was no such project in the CDA for the past ten years with that type of expenditure.
And this list can go on.
Our PM is a serial liar.
Under Keith Rowley’s leadership, T&T is slowly falling apart.
We are shunned by all and sundry. The EU has blacklisted us. Guyana calls us a nation that is falling apart. A Danish Minister calls us a “corner of shame”. And trade advisories tell their citizens to avoid TT.
We reach!
By Capil Bissoon