ROWLEY'S HAIL MARY PASS

In American football there is a play that is referred to as a "Hail Mary pass". What happens is this: a touchdown is worth six points. It sometimes happens that one team is behind by, say, four points, and there is only enough time on the clock for the team that is behind to make one more play. If the team scores a touchdown on that play it wins the game. If it does not score ... well, that's it! They lose! Usually the quarterback of the team that is behind at  this time throws the football to a receiver that is way downfield. If the receiver catches the ball a touchdown is certain. That is why it's called a 'Hail Mary' as when the ball is going through the air for those few interminable seconds you can almost hear the supporters of that team as well as the quarterback saying "Hail Mary, full of grace ...".

Dr. Keith Rowley's play in Parliament yesterday could be labelled such a pass because if what he said turns out to be not true he will have effectively sunk himself and his PNM team. That would be it! Finito! Kaput! On the other hand, if all that he has said is true the Government is sunk!

Dr. Rowley showed clearly yesterday that he understood clearly that he simply had to come with something new for the no confidence motion that he was bringing. A simple re-hashing of past issues was not going to cut it. So he came up with some e mails that, if true, are so serious that they would bring the Government down, as I said earlier. The e mails basically allege a criminal conspiracy between the Prime Minister, the Attorney General and the Prime Minister's special security adviser, Captain Gary Griffith over the section 34 issue. Further the e mails go further to suggest that the parties involved were planning serious harm to a journalist.

The problem here is that the e mails appear on their very face to be faked. For example, a lot of the e mails are supposed to have come from an e mail address: anan@ gmail.com. But it is not possible to create a g mail account with less than six characters. So, that e mail address would have to be, say, anan12@gmail.com in order to be valid. (And as if to prove this my computer has highlighted and underlined the fake address that I just made up the way that it does whenever I type a real e mail or web address. It didn't do that for the "anan" address.) So, what are we to make of this? Then there is another e mail address that ends in ".coN "(I have high lighted and capitalised the "n" for emphasis). There should be an "m" where the "n"is. Then there is an alleged exchange of e mails between Captain Griffith and Mr. Ramlogan starting with Mr. Ramlogan allegedly e mailing Captain Griffith at 1:33am on a Monday morning and Captain Griffith replying at 1:40am! So? So these men don't sleep and are sitting on their computers at that time?! Really? I'm sorry. That doesn't make sense.

There are other things that lead me to believe that the e mails are faked, but hopefully you get the point. Then Dr. Rowley wants us to believe that he had this information for the last six months!? Really? So he is saying that he knew that there was a threat on the life of the journalist but did nothing about it?! What was he waiting for? For the woman to be killed and then he could say 'ah!Ha! Caught you!' In other words, scoring political points is more important than saving someone's life!?

(There are other things too. Did anyone notice, for example, that the Express published all the e mails with the adresses, except the ".con" address was deleted in their publication? I wonder why they did that? Hmmmm! Makes you think, doesn't it?)

But back to the erstwhile Leader of the Opposition. The accusations that he has made are very, very serious. The Prime Minister has quite properly referred them to the Commissioner of Police. If they turn out to be true the Prime Minister and her Attorney General will have to resign. There is no question of that! But if the accusations turn out to be false then Dr. Rowley should be expelled from the Parliament. This is much too serious to warrant a slight slap on the wrist or a mere suspension. No one should be allowed to make accusations like this in the Parliament ... the highest court in our land ... if they are not true. No one!