A Matter of Truth... (Authenticate the Evidence)

Depending on who you talk to, anywhere between twenty to fifty thousand of us marched in protest of the Section 34 legislation. This was the result of five Round Table meetings called together and Chaired by David Abdullah of the Movement for Social Justice and responded to and populated by member organizations of the trade union movement and much of civil society. We were incensed, all of us, outraged at the abuse that Section 34 represented. We, who in our thousands had our voices heard on the Promenade that fateful Friday and delivered a stinging ultimatum to the government returned to our meeting room to strategize what exactly our 'or else' was going to be, found ourselves instead duped and yoked to a political agenda. It turned out that others saw a chance to harness the public outrage and use it for political gain, first in the Tobago elections, and then to build momentum on that for their own aspirations in Trinidad.

Many of us sat in that room astounded as the big unions and the PNM not only took credit for the turnout, but instead of focusing on the issue of our delivered ultimatum, changed the discussion to planning further protests to throw the government off balance to eventually force an early election.

As that was not what we came there for many of us left at the first opportunity.

Everything that they (what remains of the Round Table) has done since is in keeping with that discussion. This is why the sketchy email evidence that Dr. Rowley presented to the Parliament under privilege never fooled me.

Now the Attorney for the Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar Israel Khan, SC, is calling for investigations into Dr. Keith Rowley and others if the emails and the content are proven fake. He claims that if it turned out that  those allegations were a fabrication, the police would have to investigate Rowley for treason. In his own words: “Treason is any deliberate attempt to bring down the constitutionally elected government. It could be an act too. It does not only have to be through violence. The police will have to investigate whether there was any conspiracy to bring down the Government.”

That is a serious charge to make and one that brings this whole discussion into a new light.

At the coming out party for the PNM's candidate in the Chaguanas West bye election  Dr. Keith Rowley said he is beyond whether the email addresses are real or not, that he is dealing with the content. But if the content came in on a vehicle that is proven to be unreal, how then can what it delivers be anything but? I listened as his few supporters screamed their support, not realizing that what he was in fact advocating is engaging in fiction to hopefully stumble upon a fact.

So what is to be done?

I have confessed publicly to having supported Dr. Rowley for my Member of Parliament in May 2010 because I believed him then to be a man of honor and promise, a conclusion I gathered from his public persona, and because the only other option put up by the Congress of the People was a joke. I have since come to know better.

I believe him to be a wild and reckless individual who should never have access to power.

I have sat on the Round Table and listened to machinations that i have never revealed out of respect for the closed doors of that organization, and i left because i knew these people were going to do something stupid. Email gate is that something stupid, i believe that in my heart. If these people set off on this exercise KNOWINGLY perpetrating a fraud against the duly elected government of this nation then there has to be consequences. This investigation has to take on another shape now, there needs to be an investigation into how Dr. Rowley came to have this alleged evidence on which this entire matter is predicated. He must be made to prove that this entire fiasco was not concocted and then foisted on a trusting public.

From the very start of this I have been saying authenticate the evidence, verify the contents. I firmly believe that it is in every one's best interest if the Commissioner of Police were to launch an investigation into the origins of this evidence to see if they do in fact represent anything of substance and worthy of serious investigations, or if they are nothing but a hoax designed to breathe life into what remained of the dying Section 34 protest.

There can be no justice for anyone here until this is done.