Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts says he was forced to re­sign from the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment due to mount­ing pres­sure from the pub­lic, the Op­po­si­tion and even his own Cab­i­net col­leagues.Some of his own Cab­i­net col­leagues were against him, he said.Roberts al­so threw in the tow­el as MP for D'Aab­die/O'Meara.Dur­ing an in­ter­view in Diego Mar­tin yes­ter­day, mo­ments af­ter pen­ning his res­ig­na­tion let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Roberts said dur­ing the four years he spent in Gov­ern­ment he re­alised one thing... pol­i­tics has a moral­i­ty of its own.

He said the last thing he ex­pect­ed was be­ing asked to re­sign.Roberts said re­sign­ing with a "heavy heart was an un­der­state­ment" since his en­tire life was sur­round­ed by sports.

"If a min­is­ter has been forced to re­sign or have to re­sign, hav­ing done noth­ing wrong, a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment, du­ly elect­ed by the peo­ple, is put in­to a po­si­tion to re­sign, then where do we go from here?" he asked.

Asked why his Cab­i­net col­leagues were against him, Roberts replied:"You would have to ask them be­cause, me, to tell you the truth, one of my weak­ness­es from hav­ing lived a life in sport is that I am too much of a team play­er."My wife al­ways tells me that I be­lieve in peo­ple too much. I have learnt the hard way to­day. That is the re­gret I have."

Asked if he was sup­port­ed by his Cab­i­net col­leagues fol­low­ing the au­dit, Roberts said: "A few were sup­port­ive, some were open­ly un­sup­port­ive, and some who I thought were col­leagues were ac­tu­al­ly not. It is amaz­ing."

Yes­ter­day, a som­bre-look­ing Roberts, ac­com­pa­nied by his 22-year-old wife, Shan­dell, who is 25 weeks preg­nant, said de­spite what has hap­pened "life will go on."

Roberts said sev­er­al min­is­ters, whose min­istry came un­der ques­tion, were nev­er asked to re­sign.He asked: "All of a sud­den pres­sure was brought to mount from all over and pres­sure was put on my Prime Min­is­ter and forced me to re­sign. Did I want to re­sign? No!"

Is there a ca­bal in the Gov­ern­ment?

"There is no ca­bal. The PM is in charge. She makes her de­ci­sions.

"How­ev­er, there would be some who would be for you, some who are against you and most im­por­tant­ly, many who are for them­selves."

He said he was not sur­prised by the turn of events be­cause peo­ple said pol­i­tics was a dirty game.

"I have learnt that it is a filthy game and it is get­ting filth­i­er every day, where fact and truth have no place and where in­ves­ti­ga­tions and doc­u­men­ta­tion is ir­rel­e­vant.

"Is just who can make the most noise with the most in­dis­ci­plined jour­nal­ists in his­to­ry.

"Those who do not ad­here to the tenets of jour­nal­ism, who are un­able to state their bi­as­es open­ly, but you can see it clear­ly."

Asked if the PM buck­led un­der pres­sure, Roberts said:"Well, yes! I guess you have to buck­le un­der pres­sure in pol­i­tics... be­cause pol­i­tics has a moral­i­ty of its own.

"So even though you did noth­ing wrong and the au­dit is flawed and nat­ur­al jus­tice has not tak­en its nat­ur­al course, de­ci­sions are made based on pol­i­tics."

In spite of all of that, Robert said he had no re­grets about join­ing the PP Gov­ern­ment and serv­ing his coun­try.

"De­spite the PP's flaws, they are far su­pe­ri­or to what the PNM could of­fer.

"I have re­grets not be­ing able to fin­ish what I start­ed, to leave a last­ing im­pact in sport for the next gen­er­a­tion... and that I have been forced to leave, hav­ing done noth­ing wrong," he added.Roberts said he was sad to leave.

"For me, per­son­al­ly, pol­i­tics is just pain and tor­ture. It's fi­nan­cial­ly crip­pling."

Be­fore en­ter­ing pol­i­tics, Roberts was a talk show host and coach. He al­so op­er­at­ed a suc­cess­ful restau­rant.

He said: "As a min­is­ter, I made far less mon­ey. I ac­cept­ed the min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tion be­cause of one thing... for the love of coun­try.

"Go­ing in­to Gov­ern­ment you take a huge pay cut. Now I can go and make some mon­ey and re­lax my­self and deal with less stress.

"Am I cel­e­brat­ing? No! be­cause I made up my mind to serve and I didn't get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ful­fil my ob­jec­tives."

Will he re­sign from the Con­gress of the Peo­ple?

"I was nev­er re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in the COP. You can­not re­sign from a corpse. The COP is dead. They are just a com­e­dy of er­rors. I hope that Prakash (Ra­mad­har) gets some more votes be­cause he called for my res­ig­na­tion."

Roberts said there was le­gal ad­vice in­side and out­side to the board of the Sport Com­pa­ny, "dic­tat­ing and telling them they were ob­lig­at­ed to pay. Well, so be it! You live and you learn."

He asked: "If the pop­u­la­tion and pres­sure groups had that in­for­ma­tion, would the pres­sure been less? I think so."

Roberts said no oth­er sport min­is­ter was able to achieve what he did.

Was he dealt an un­fair blow?

Roberts said, "Yes."

$34m EBeam con­tract

Roberts said most of the clam­our­ing from the pub­lic sur­rounds the $34 mil­lion con­tract to EBeam In­ter­act Ltd, which was raised in the Life Sport au­dit.

"It ap­pears to the pop­u­la­tion that some­body in the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T has stolen $34 mil­lion. It was stat­ed by an of­fi­cial re­port that the sec­ond tranche of $17 mil­lion was paid, de­spite the board re­ceiv­ing ad­vice not to pay.

"Now that is a very se­ri­ous thing. Any rea­son­able per­son who reads that, they would think that is to­tal cor­rup­tion and steal­ing.

"The prob­lem is, that is not the truth."

What the PM said

Roberts said at 1.30 pm yes­ter­day, the PM tele­phoned him to say "that due to the pres­sures from the par­ty, Gov­ern­ment and so on, that she has to ac­cept my res­ig­na­tion. She al­so in­di­cat­ed that she knew I did noth­ing wrong."

Roberts said: " I told her, God bless."

Will Roberts con­tin­ue to stay in pol­i­tics?

"No! don't call me, text, e-mail or leave a voice­mail on my phone. I go­ing to hug up my wife and take care of my un­born ba­by and oth­er chil­dren and re­lax. How­ev­er, you don't get out of pol­i­tics un­til you dead."

Asked if he thought the PP had a good chance of win­ning the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion, Roberts said he be­lieved so, "but they (min­is­ters) have to stop the pet­ty pol­i­tics, im­ma­tu­ri­ty and work like a team, rather than look for in­di­vid­ual glo­ry."

Roberts said while the PNM was cel­e­brat­ing his res­ig­na­tion, they were not an al­ter­na­tive for the peo­ple.