You have to hand it to that well-known and highly influential mélange of mixed personalities known as Consolidated Fools, perhaps better known to devotees and detractors alike as CF, the master of tomfoolery and buffoonery, whose skills as the ultimate waver of promised, but seldom-to-be-revealed evidence clearly matches, perhaps even threatens, those of his lord and mentor (L&M) when not revealing, but discussing all the same, selected content of a Top Secret Report.
For those not in the know, sedition is defined as “inciting or causing people to rebel against the authority of a state” and seditious behaviour is punishable by death in certain parts of the world. But let’s leave CF and his L&M to their posturing and take our minds back a few months in time to a Thursday night’s TALK on which Rick presented his invited guest, a young man, who spoke about the frustrations, disappointments and challenges that afflict the youth of today on a daily basis. The young man was so irate, so moved, that he vented his frustration and anger in an outburst of utter despair declaring that he wished he could shoot the prime minister on the spot, or words to that effect.
Of course this revelation, on air, to Rick Wayne and, by extension, to the whole nation (because what do people do on Thursday evenings other than watch Rick ranting?) caused somewhat of an uproar fueled by the usual party hacks, defenders of the faith, and AAs – and I do not mean alcoholics anonymous (The first A denotes the person and the second A is the abbreviation for a vulgar term for “anal sycophants.” Enjoy!)
What was said on Rick’s show was not so bad. The perpetrators, Rick and the lad, said what they said in full view of the nation. It was merely an expression of pure frustration. Surely, Dear Reader, even you have had murderous thoughts (I could have killed her!) without leaving a trail of corpses in your wake. There was no way any sane and sensible person could have interpreted the comments vented on Rick’s show to be an invitation to sedition or an incitement to rebellion and social chaos. (Rick’s Thursday show, TALK, is carried live on W-Vent 93.5 or 94.7 – so you have no excuse to miss it.)
Now in my view – humble as I always am – CF’s insinuations, presented without any proof, of a cadre of police officers bent on disruption, perhaps destroying the government, or overthrowing the regime, even arresting the Cabinet, or maybe closing ranks with the Opposition, and all that such enactments would mean in the imaginations of the masses, including blood running in the gutters, corpses hanging from low branches, bullet-riddled bodies floating downstream and – Oh-horror-of-horrors – the Castries Custody Suite packed tight with SLP politicians eating prison gruel dished out by Phil Corn-on-le-Cob on floors awash with honourable urine, are – given the vivid nature of gossiping imaginations – much more seditious and iniquitous than anything ever uttered in frustration on Rick’s show.
If CF is withholding evidence of an insurgency and refuses to hand over the said evidence in a timely fashion, then I would imagine he would be guilty of a crime, the ramifications of which, if the revolution ever came, would leave him with blood and the well-being of this society on his hands. CF, without mentioning names, talks of a specific group of police officers. How much more damaging to police moral can it get? Of course, in the usual CF way, proof is promised in the form of “tune-in-next-week” admonitions to hear the latest “proof” to support his claims. The good thing is, of course, that CF will never present his “proof” – it’s merely a diversionary tactic – so we are safe for a week at least. But seriously, withholding evidence is a crime, more so if the submission of the evidence would have prevented a crime from ever happening at all. Once CF placed the stamp of officialdom – THE POLICE – on the alleged, planned disruption, he elevated the threat to levels even higher than those of Oddity Odlum’s heydays! A core of ranking police officers is a great rallying point for revolutionaries tired of the status quo. CF is a disgrace to his office. And the PM, with his selective attacks on the police force through allusions to damaging but unrevealed (he is the only one qualified to read the report clearly) proof of misconduct (we have to take his word for it), is not a jot better.
With friends like CF, who needs enemies? The life of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, ended after his king had uttered the words “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” and four of his knights, eager to curry favour, took him at his word. And then there’s Bill Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar before the Senate building: (Casca first, then the other Conspirators and Brutus stab Caesar who looks into his former friend’s eyes and utters his immortal, yet dying, words) “Et tu, Brute! Then fall, Caesar!”
