DENIS?LOWE is going to need much more than his renewed faith. And he is going to have to speak more voluminously on matters other than religion.
Political survival must be at the very top of his agenda.
On the face of it, Dr Lowe has to talk himself back into a substantive ministry – apparently not the one he held before – if we should go by Denis Kellman’s utterance that he is the de facto Minister of the Environment, Water Resources and Drainage.
There is no doubt that Mr Kellman will keep reporting to work as the man in charge. And there is lesser doubt that Dr Lowe will be hard-pressed to get an acting pick somewhere as the days go by.
Meanwhile, coincidentally, Prime Minister Freundel Stuart has been overseas, far away in Helsinki and Stockholm, attending a Global Sustainability Conference.
And seeing how Mr Stuart does not boast of being a BackBerry buff, there was not likely to be much texting between him and the more acknowledged techie Acting Prime Minister Ronald Jones on any awkward situation that might have arisen for Dr Lowe.
But flooding and our watercourse woes are such an overwhelming challenge, Dr Lowe just might successfully argue that Drainage requires two ministers.
If there can be the serious notion of two Deputy Prime Ministers, why not two Ministers of Drainage? And while we are at it, would it be any more ludicrous to consider two Prime Ministers: one shut off in his castle, the other among the people.
The latter could look after the health and wealth of the ordinary electorate, the first with measured thought might cast his mind upon the vagaries and vicissitudes of life on earth, as he inclines on cloud nine.
How much more monarchical could we get? And members of our political directorate keep touting a republic!
The unattended matter to date of finding a permanent nest for Dr Lowe must be more unsettling to him – despite his kind expression of patience – than it is to us; and we are agitated.
We are alarmed because here it is a former Cabinet minister returns reinvigorated from a languishing near-death experience, ready to resume his work, which he has obviously been barred from, and knows not whither he goeth.
Meanwhile the Prime Minister keeps him waiting.
It would seem Dr Lowe has faith in Bette Midler’s “voice of hope” – from a distance!
