Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day knocked sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Sat Ma­haraj for de­scrib­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning as a "racist."

Speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Row­ley said while Ma­haraj's state­ments were proof of the coun­try's democ­ra­cy in ac­tion, he was "du­ty bound" to re­spond to his com­ments.

"This is still a free coun­try, peo­ple are free to ex­press their views. I'm tak­ing no is­sue with any per­son's view. How­ev­er, the head­line in to­day's Guardian is more than just an ex­pres­sion of view, it can have the ef­fect of mis­rep­re­sent­ing the coun­try's his­to­ry and the facts of cer­tain sit­u­a­tions with re­spect to pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion, pub­lic pol­i­cy, racial sol­i­dar­i­ty and the peace and sta­bil­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Row­ley said cit­i­zens would have di­gest­ed Ma­haraj's state­ment as facts and he could not al­low such a record to stand with no re­sponse to it since "it is pos­si­ble that their be­hav­iour would be in­flu­enced and not for the bet­ter."

The PM said Ma­haraj's com­ments in try­ing to jus­ti­fy his claims were wrong and mis­lead­ing and an at­tempt to rewrite the coun­try's his­to­ry.

"I re­spect Mr Ma­haraj's at­tempt to de­fend what he thinks he is de­fend­ing but I will de­fend the coun­try's record, es­pe­cial­ly when I was a part of that record."

In yes­ter­day's T&T Guardian, Ma­haraj claimed a se­ries of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices Man­ning had per­pet­u­at­ed against East In­di­ans in T&T were racist, bias and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry.

In high­light­ing each of the cas­es Ma­haraj raised, Row­ley gave an ac­count of how they tran­spired on be­half of the then Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment-led gov­ern­ment.

Ca­roni 1975

Ltd clo­sure

Row­ley in­sist­ed that its clo­sure was not a racial act.

Hav­ing served as agri­cul­ture min­is­ter from 1991 to 1995, Row­ley con­tra­dict­ed Ma­haraj's ac­cu­sa­tions that the shut­ting down of the sug­ar in­dus­try was done to in­crease hard­ships of the sug­ar work­ers, out­lin­ing that the cre­ation of Ca­roni 1975 Ltd was done to res­cue the sug­ar in­dus­try.

"It had noth­ing to do with race... it hap­pened that the Gov­ern­ment of the day, which hap­pened to be PNM, in­ter­vened and cre­at­ed that in­jec­tion of life in­to the (sug­ar) in­dus­try."

He added that de­spite the in­jec­tions of mon­ey in­to the sug­ar in­dus­try, amount­ing to over $2 bil­lion, it was nec­es­sary to phase out sug­ar pro­duc­tion.

Is­lands such as St Kitts and Nevis and Bar­ba­dos, Row­ley said, al­so closed most of their sug­ar in­dus­tries as well.

"For some­body to get up to­day and say that the clos­ing of Ca­roni 1975 Ltd was a racial act to suf­fer In­di­an peo­ple, is close to sedi­tion, made to cre­ate racial dis­cord and dis­turb the peace­ful fab­ric of Trinidad and To­ba­go. That al­le­ga­tion can­not be sup­port­ed by the facts of the day."

Sat Shar­ma

On Ma­haraj's claims re­gard­ing for­mer Chief Jus­tice Sat Shar­ma's at­tempt­ed ar­rest, Row­ley said the re­moval of a Chief Jus­tice re­quires the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, stat­ing that the or­der for the ar­rest did not come from Man­ning but from the then Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son, who in­di­cat­ed that Shar­ma's ac­tions mer­it­ed his re­moval.

Shar­ma was ac­cused of at­tempt­ing to per­suade the DPP to drop a mur­der charge against vas­cu­lar sur­geon Dr Vi­jay Narayns­ingh in 2004.

Oc­c­ah Sea­paul

Row­ley al­so de­fend­ed Man­ning's de­ci­sion to place for­mer House Speak­er Oc­c­ah Sea­paul un­der house ar­rest.

He said Sea­paul sus­pend­ed for­mer par­lia­men­tar­i­an Ken Val­ley and in­di­cat­ed that she had in­tend­ed to sus­pend two oth­er par­lia­men­tar­i­ans–Wen­dell Mot­t­ley and Kei­th So­bion–in what she said was a bid to re­duce the Gov­ern­ment ma­jor­i­ty.

"We took ac­tion as a Gov­ern­ment to pro­tect our­selves in the Par­lia­ment from a Speak­er who had gone rogue."

Fer­oza Ramjohn

Re­fer­ring to Fer­oza Ramjohn, a pub­lic ser­vant who in­sti­tut­ed le­gal ac­tion in seek­ing jus­tice for the lack of pro­mo­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties, Row­ley said there was an in­quiry re­gard­ing cor­rup­tion in­volv­ing T&T pass­ports, in which Ramjohn was im­pli­cat­ed, which led to Man­ning's with­draw­al of her ap­point­ment to a po­si­tion with the Lon­don mis­sion.

Ramjohn took the mat­ter to court and the Court of Ap­peal ruled in her favour, call­ing the is­sue of the pass­ports "pure­ly cir­cum­stan­tial."

Ra­dio and TV li­cences

On the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion li­cences re­quest­ed by Ma­haraj, who claimed that his ap­pli­ca­tion was re­fused due to racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, Row­ley said Ma­haraj's ap­pli­ca­tion was found to have been in­com­plete and even af­ter a re­quest was made for him to com­plete his ap­pli­ca­tion and re-sub­mit, Ma­haraj de­clined, pre­fer­ring in­stead to take le­gal ac­tion.

Di­vine Echoes

The band Di­vine Echoes, Row­ley said, was mere­ly a band for the pur­pos­es of cre­at­ing mu­sic and was not made to in­crease racism in T&T.

Pub­lic Ser­vice

dis­crim­i­na­tion

Row­ley al­so com­ment­ed on a study done by Dr Sel­wyn Ryan and Dr John La Guerre, which showed that few In­do-Trinida­di­ans were pro­mot­ed to se­nior posts in the pub­lic ser­vice.

"That is a false state­ment. Mr Ken­neth Lal­la was chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion longer than any­body else, un­less of course he was dis­crim­i­nat­ed against, I don't know what the ba­sis of that par­tic­u­lar state­ment is."