A touch of Akash

WAYNE KUBLALSINGH

ON MAY 5, Stuart Young, former prime minister and energy minister, defied Napoleon Bonaparte’s maxim, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” And paid the penalty.

He hosted a press conference alerting the incoming government of its injudicious, flippant and airy-fairy plans for our energy sector; these plans were based on statements made at the swearing-in ceremony two days earlier.

Tempting fate, Young went where few in our society dare to tread. With plain facts. He explained the case, the record, the sobering prospects of our energy sector. And for this, on social media, he was almost unanimously excoriated, mocked, attacked in the most racist and vicious ways.

At a post-Cabinet press conference on May 8, the new Prime Minister appeared to ignore Young entirely. The PM asserted that we would combat, among other measures, our current fiscal crisis, an $11 billion budget deficit by this year’s end, with energy from Grenada, Guyana, Suriname.

Young had outlined the impracticalities of this kind of talk, at least as a short or medium-term solution. Kamla Persad-Bissessar stated that she had known that the state’s finances would be in dire straits. Of course. Why was the PNM finance minister for the last nine and a half years patting down our pockets, chinksing around the edges of our existential biscuits, scrounging and skimping to make ends – pensions, public sector wages, transfers, gratuities, interest on debt – meet?

Given these testing fiscal circumstances, it was incumbent on the reporters present to ask testing questions. Were they going to be cowed? Muzzle themselves for politeness sake? Give the new government a little chance, nah. Or enter into a serious dialectic? Democratise our public business, free us from the single-voiced authority of the Prime Minister?

Akash Samaroo was the first to pose a question. “Good evening. You painted a pretty bleak economic picture just now. I know, as an opposition, you all were vehemently against the salary increases for parliamentarians. Now that you have told us what you have told us there, will there be any consideration, a personal decision, to revert to the old salary structure for your government?”

The PM responded. “Well, my lawyers have advised me, AG (turning around to Attorney General John Jeremie SC), that I do not have that prerogative. In accordance with the law, I do not have it. We did discuss it. And am…AG…”

The AG spoke: “There are a number of persons covered by the SRC (Salaries Review Commission). Including judges, permanent secretaries and so on. So that it is difficult to do it that way.”

OK. Jeremie did not say that a reversion to the old salary structure was impossible. He said it was “difficult.” He said it was “difficult to do that way.” In other words, there is/are, or might be, other ways in which the reversion might be undertaken. Unfortunately, the PM possessed the wit to not ask: What less difficult way? What other way? And the media possessed not the wit to ask the same.

But Samaroo now asked. Why not do it through the Children’s Life Fund, which the PM herself had laudably instituted. This immediately raised the hackles of Persad-Bissessar. “For ten years, Akash, have you ever asked any one of them (that is PNM) if they would contribute to the Children’s Life Fund? You have not.”

Akash: “I am asking you.”

The PM: “The answer is no. The answer is no. On my first week in office, you are saying I must mandate everybody to give up a percentage of their…We did it. Immediately, I set up this Life Fund, I did it. And you cannot continue to hold us to one standard, but fail to mention the others. So, when you ask this question, mention them. I am not booffing you. I am just saying, you cannot expect us, I was too nice last time. I was too nice. And therefore…no, I was too nice. And people took my kindness for weakness. That will not happen this time. I have a country to run, and I have people to look after. Sorry, Akash. But that’s the answer.”

Akash had a follow-up: “It is a legit question. Following on your philanthropy between 2010 and 2015. So, I was wondering, and you all were very much against that salary increase, that’s why I asked.”

PM: “You are right. But I have tried. And the legal advice is otherwise.”

Akash went on to ask another question to which the PM responded equally effusively.

Subsequent to this press conference, social media went to war against Akash. Nasty, bitter, incoherent, irrelevant, infantile, rude, manic and effusive. On and on it came. A tidal storm of anti-Akash memes. Against a reporter who had similarly raised the hackles of Dr Rowley; by asking apposite questions.

Few might have noted that the PM and the AG were not saying the same thing. The AG, the chief legal officer of the land, the guardian of our public interest, was telling us that a reversion to old salaries was difficult. Difficult does not mean impossible. “Difficult to do it that way,” suggests other way/s. With one fell blow, Akash had deconstructed the voice of authority. To deconstruct is to tease out, take apart, expose contradiction and fiction.