Glenville Ash­by

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he is en­er­gised and com­mit­ted to re­struc­tur­ing and broad­en­ing the base of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). Row­ley was ad­dress­ing sup­port­ers at Medgar Evers Col­lege in down­town Brook­lyn, New York on Fri­day. "The PNM is more than a po­lit­i­cal par­ty. It is part of the cul­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go," he said, to sus­tained ap­plause.

Yet, he was quick to ad­mit his par­ty had failed on many lev­els in­clud­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty and in­tegri­ty. "Times have changed. Peo­ple want to know who you are and what you are do­ing. We can no longer de­fend peo­ple at the ex­pense of in­sti­tu­tions," he said. "It is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­con­nect to the elec­torate. We have to be com­mit­ted whether in of­fice or out of of­fice. "You in New York are part of this base...I want you." And to a stand­ing ova­tion, he added: "Some­times, you who are away from home have a bet­ter ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the PNM."

Row­ley, who said he did not ini­tial­ly de­sire the job as po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM, vowed: "I am ready to put our house in or­der."

Row­ley's vis­it, or­gan­ised by PNM North Amer­i­ca, is ev­i­dence of the Di­as­po­ra's grow­ing in­flu­ence on pol­i­tics "back home." It al­so comes on the heels of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's high­ly pub­li­cised tour, where she ad­dressed the UN and vis­it­ed this very bor­ough to a rap­tur­ous wel­come. Dur­ing his two-hour ap­pear­ance at Mary Pin­kette Lec­ture Hall, Row­ley ac­knowl­edged the short­com­ings of the PNM in the past but strong­ly ques­tioned the com­pe­tence of the Gov­ern­ment to man­age T&T. "With glob­al re­ces­sion af­fect­ing gas prices, rev­enues are not the same. Yet we see the Gov­ern­ment want to be more PNM than the PMM," mak­ing ref­er­ence to the $7 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to so­cial ser­vices in the re­cent­ly passed bud­get.

"No one can hold a can­dle to the PNM when it comes to ed­u­ca­tion and ser­vices, but where are they go­ing to get the mon­ey in these times? They have re­placed the strong rev­enue col­lec­tion that we pro­posed."

Row­ley cit­ed grow­ing labour un­rest as an ex­am­ple of what he called, "a paral­y­sis tak­ing hold in the Gov­ern­ment," as he ac­cused the coali­tion of "try­ing to un­do every­thing the PNM did."

Row­ley claimed the Gov­ern­ment "is still cam­paign­ing," and that it has com­pro­mised good gov­er­nance for short-term po­lit­i­cal pop­u­lar­i­ty.

He al­so ques­tioned the judge­ment of key Gov­ern­ment de­ci­sions, in­clud­ing can­celling the pur­chase of two ves­sels orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed to com­bat the grow­ing drug trade, the scrap­ping of the alu­minum smelter project which he viewed as a cat­a­lyst for growth, and the han­dling of the Cli­co de­ba­cle. "Our de­ci­sion to bail out Cli­co was all about restor­ing con­fi­dence in our fi­nan­cial sec­tor. Every­one at that time agreed with our po­si­tion. "They (the Gov­ern­ment) just keep bad talk­ing the PNM while hold­ing on to the steer­ing wheel, but this is putting our coun­try at risk." In his week-long vis­it Row­ley will con­tin­ue to ad­dress is­sues re­lat­ing to gov­er­nance and the fu­ture of the PNM.

New York Cor­re­spon­dent

glenvil­leash­by@gmail.com