Malignant Narcissism and Hubris...

With word from Internet search giant Google that for all intents and purposes what we have come to know as emailgate is nothing but a cleverly fabricated hoax, there can be nothing left to the political leader of the People's National Movement and promoter in chief of the motion but to resign and face the courts.

Thrown into the black hole of internal jurisprudence, I am sure it has come as a massive surprise to him (Rowley) and his co-conspirators that the results to the queries put before them could have been delivered with such speed, and now surely all who were involved have to be concerned with what exactly is going to happen next.

Listening to PNM spin doctor in chief Faris al Rawi trying to salvage something from it while looking ashen and defeated on live television, it is clear that no amount of beating is going to get this now dead horse to move. Perhaps the best thing Faris can do right now is to revert to the lawyer that he was when he first cautioned against proceeding along this treacherous course.

And now that the chickens have come home to roost the talk in legal circles is pointing straight to criminal libel as the claims and accusations made, if proven to be as completely and as patently false as Google thinks they are, may well land Keith Rowley and all who sat around that Goodwood Park table that fateful night and concocted this mad enterprise in some serious hot water.

What could they have possibly been thinking, that the government built on virtually some of the best and brightest legal minds in the western hemisphere was not going to figure out how to bring this to a conclusion? Who was advising and who was taking notes? And if sentences are dished out who else besides Keith Rowley stand to take some jail?

The thing just got serious, and while many who were beating the drums of war have now gone silent, those who were warning that this might just boomerang have been proven to be sage in their estimate.

Going forward from here Keith Rowley faces a barrage of lawsuits that may well crush him, but he has no one but himself to blame. We kept calling for the evidence, for him to provide the whistleblower, to give information on the alleged illegal SIA sweep that was then reconfigured and repackaged as emails in the hopes that a case could be built for content, but it was never provided.

Now all of his comrades and friend-with-benefits such as David Abdulah, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and Fixin' T&T all have decisions to make, should they stick with him? Or jettision in the hope of a soft landing and to fight another day?

Others may not be so lucky. With his fortunes inextricably tied to Keith Rowley's, the OWTU's Ancil Roget may not be able to escape resigning as well as he made available the might and manpower of the oilfield workers union in pursuit of Rowley's mad dream. What can he now say to the thousands who followed him on his escalating fallacy? Sorry? My bad?

In instances such as these the only apologies the people need to hear is the apology for abuse of office. Beyond that pack your bags and hope for the best, as all those who have slandered, maligned, libeled and otherwise defamed the characters of the Prime Minister, the Attorney General, the Leader of Government Business and Minister of Housing, the Minister of National Security, the Minister of Works and the entire government in general all in the name of a naked grab for power may suddenly find themselves calculating things such as personal net worth in preparation to pay some hefty legal fees and court awards.

What it is they say about those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad? Keith Rowley's rise to power has been a testimony of the destruction of careers, ironically culminating in his own but not unexpectedly so.

I remember quoting Professor Patrick Watson in my column written the day after the accusations were laid in the Parliament, where the goodly Professor opined – 'If this is true it would be the end of the government, if it isn't it would be the end of Keith Rowley's career.' Now he (Rowley) finds himself literally hung on his own petard and, with nothing to verify his claims but a fistful of fake pages and a headful of hubris, may well rue the day he decided to embark on a journey of malice to attack the government with made up facts based on circumstance he fully well knew to be a lie.