T&T..Deafening silence from PNM women
A flush ten days after People’s National Movement (PNM) frontline women, led by opposition and political leader Pennelope Beckles, prominently joined the International Women’s Day (IWD) march in Port of Spain, they remain silent on the overtly sexualized insult hurled by their former political leader and prime minister Dr. Keith Rowley. Sadly, few expect more of them. Dr. Rowley’s term of office was riddled with inappropriate gendered and sexualized commentary that was met with the same silence from the party, its women’s league, and its women Members of Parliament (MPs).
Indeed, it’s the very silence of the party’s otherwise confidently vocal frontline women that made the October 2024 intervention in Parliament by former House speaker Bridgid Annisette-George noteworthy. In that instance, Mrs. Annisette-George blasted another former PNM prime minister, Port of Spain North/St. Ann’s West MP Stuart Young, for his “zami” reference caught on a hot microphone. History will remember her courage. In both instances, the sexualized references were directed at T&T’s first woman prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar. It is perhaps no wonder that that history-making ascension emerged from a political party other than the PNM.
In his nine-plus years as prime minister, Dr. Rowley treated the country to successive examples of male arrogance, buffing and intimidation of the media, sound and fury when confronted with opposing views, casual gendered impropriety, and a profound inability to mea culpa. He exposed his fragile ego in his account of his political contribution: “I led the PNM. I joined the PNM in 1974. I held high office in the PNM from 1987. I served the PNM in opposition and in government as minister of government, and I led the party for 15 years.” Missing is the ignominious fate of his party under his watch. In his Tuesday rant, all were on show, stripped naked by the bitter taste of political irrelevance since demitting office and the wound of his disputed omission from his party’s 70th-anniversary celebrations. But Dr. Rowley is a known quantity. It is the behaviour of the current PNM leadership that is now called to national attention.
Express Editorial