Richard Lord

Gov­ern­ment says a short video with a man who re­sem­bles and sounds like a min­is­ter wrap­ping a mar­i­jua­na cig­a­rette was just a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment dis­trac­tion that was not de­serv­ing of any de­tailed re­sponse.And Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts says the video is the start of a dirty cam­paign by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment-led Dr Kei­th Row­ley.He did not con­firm or de­ny he was the man in the video but said the lat­est at­tack was as a re­sult of state­ments he made against Row­ley in Par­lia­ment dur­ing the re­cent de­bate on a mo­tion re­lat­ing to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny/WASA waste­water treat­ment plant in Beetham Gar­dens.

Roberts in­sist­ed he was ex­pect­ing such at­tacks against him as a con­se­quence."If the video is all they have, let me tell you, video nor voodoo could make me hush up, make me shut up or make me go any­where."Roberts said Row­ley and the PNM could not force him out of the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Cab­i­net."No to­bac­co, no hemp, no cow ma­nure can ever smoke me out. Good af­ter­noon, have a great day," he said, as he left the me­dia with­out tak­ing any ques­tions on the video in the hall of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's Cab­i­net meet­ing.Roberts had wait­ed on the com­ple­tion of the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence to make a state­ment to the me­dia about the video which was aired Wednes­day night.

Me­dia work­ers, not sat­is­fied he had ad­dressed the sub­stan­tive is­sue of whether the video was re­al, chased him af­ter the brief state­ment to ques­tion him fur­ther.Asked if he could share what Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told him dur­ing the Cab­i­net meet­ing, Roberts said he could not speak for the PM on the mat­ter and in­sist­ed it was the start of a dirty cam­paign by the PNM.He said re­porters should be ask­ing in­stead about the World GTL project which cost the state bil­lions of dol­lars with no pos­i­tive re­sult for the na­tion."So you could talk about video, good luck," he said as he made his way in­to a pri­vate room in the build­ing.

Ear­li­er, he said the Gov­ern­ment would not shirk from its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."We shall con­tin­ue to work and tell the pop­u­la­tion the truth about Dr Row­ley," he added.Warn­ing that more neg­a­tives things will be is­sued in the fu­ture about Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, Roberts said they "will stay fo­cussed and not be side­tracked by dis­trac­tions, by ridicu­lous things, by mu­sic videos, by game videos or by voodoo."He said in the said video he saw "hate, bit­ter­ness, vengeance. I see a rag­ing bull."For­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had once de­scribed Row­ley as a rag­ing bull.

A state­ment is­sued by Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ments and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Vas­ant Bharath al­so mir­rored some of what Roberts said.Bharath said it was rather pe­cu­liar that an un­dat­ed video, fram­ing what is al­leged to be a Min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment had sur­faced. He said the video "car­ries no ev­i­dence of any­thing but a dis­trac­tion from the re­al burn­ing is­sues of the day."

He said that "any at­tempt to an­swer the ques­tions on the video would serve the agen­da of an Op­po­si­tion, (which was) so des­per­ate to dis­tract the pop­u­la­tion from the achieve­ments sum­marised in the fourth an­niver­sary of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, that it would go to any length."Bharath said it was not just co­in­ci­den­tal that it was Roberts who ex­posed crit­i­cal ques­tions about Row­ley's per­son­al in­ter­est in the Beetham waste­water project.He added: "Those ques­tions re­main more rel­e­vant to­day than any video of an al­leged min­is­ter rolling an uniden­ti­fied sub­stance."There is no rel­e­vance to the po­lit­i­cal the­atre craft­ed by agents of mis­chief, pro­duced and di­rect­ed with ob­vi­ous in­tent to dis­tract from is­sues that af­fect the pop­u­la­tion."The Gov­ern­ment sees this as noth­ing more than a vi­cious at­tempt at char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion and will not val­i­date it with any fur­ther com­men­tary."