PEOPLE WERE so caught up with the PM's recent mea culpa they completely missed a breathtaking admission - the Government knowingly triggered the vaccine fiasco rollout. Dr Rowley told the country that despite foreknowledge of limited vaccines the Government proceeded anyway with its patently flawed vaccination plan.
Additionally, what the PM downplayed as miscommunication was actually a misrepresentation of the facts. The public was misled, causing dangerous crowding at health centres across the country. It's tempting to conclude that the principal considerations at work were purely political; a feeble attempt, perhaps, to seed hope in the population that the end of this nightmare is near.
Still, the PM's stunning acceptance of culpability seemed adequate for many people. This was, of course, a reasonable calculation - baffle the public with a hollow act of contrition thinly disguised as responsible leadership. It would suffice to cover the more damning root causes of a conspicuously engineered failure.
Frankly, Mr Shankly, it was a political masterstroke - eminently acceptable to the nodding flock. Sure, the ruse was transparent among the more intelligent in society. Still, as Trinis are a largely docile species with more bark than bite, the Government has moved on from the scandal without further perturbation.
To be honest, one week later I'm still marvelling at the simplicity of the PM's solution for the Government's prickly problem - the widespread uproar that followed the botched vaccination rollout. In all fairness, though, the tactic's effectiveness also relied heavily on the simplicity of the people. Dr Rowley delivered a political solution for a management and logistics problem.
He didn't just absolve the Minister of Health of responsibility in the fiasco - the PM pardoned everyone within the blast radius of that galactic, entirely avoidable debacle.
He shielded his administration from accounting to the public for its costly failure. This was a live demonstration of the PM's true talent, that of a shrewd political operator.
A jumped-up reporter pressed the PM to identify one person directly responsible for the fracas. Dr Rowley doubled down, saying, "I am to blame." Any opportunity to establish trust through accountability was thus squandered in favour of political manoeuvring - and it worked.
Dr Rowley understood that in saying "the buck stops here" (with me) it also means that's effectively the end of the discussion. There's no way to unseat a prime minister outside of an election so talk done. Well, not exactly.
During the news briefing, the PM mistakenly, albeit purposefully, suggested the vaccination blunder was limited to one day. The fallout was, in fact, felt on the Thursday and Friday. Perhaps because there wasn't the concomitant overcrowding on those days this was interpreted as a 'win.'
On the Wednesday, as the vaccine roll-out spun out of control spectacularly, Health Minister Deyalsingh announced an alpha
