CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley told the Par­lia­ment that he did not know how long he would re­main in pol­i­tics but had done his du­ty to the coun­try.

At the very end of his con­tri­bu­tion to the Bud­get de­bate on Thurs­day, Row­ley al­lud­ed to the ap­par­ent par­lia­men­tary swan song (fi­nal per­for­mance or ac­tiv­i­ty of a per­son’s ca­reer) de­liv­ered by Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray when he spoke on Mon­day.

“I am now in my tenth year as Prime Min­is­ter, I too may be a swan. But ladies and gen­tle­men, col­leagues in this house as long as I could leave here hav­ing done the best for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go it doesn’t mat­ter when I leave, but I’ll leave here with my head held high,” he said.

He al­so in­di­cat­ed to House Speak­er Brigid An­nis­sette-George that it had been a plea­sure work­ing with her as par­lia­men­tary Speak­er.

“I don’t know how much longer I will have in this Par­lia­ment but I have done my du­ty, I have kept the course, I have run the race and I look for­ward not for a pot of gold but for my fam­i­ly at the end of this rain­bow,” he said.

In as­sess­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ments yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said that as a politi­cian Row­ley may be test­ing the PNM’s po­lit­i­cal wa­ters.

“Politi­cians are a fun­ny kind of peo­ple, they throw things out­side there not nec­es­sar­i­ly be­cause they want to have the right an­swer but they throw it out there to see what feed­back it gets and de­pend­ing on the feed­back that will then dri­ve them to make cer­tain de­ci­sions,” he said.

A sim­i­lar view was shared by an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James, who felt that as Prime Min­is­ter, Row­ley should have been more clear in what he was try­ing to say.

He too guessed that the Prime Min­is­ter could be on some­what of a po­lit­i­cal fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion.

“It can al­so be that he was look­ing to draw out the pos­si­ble hope­fuls, those who are like­ly to want to re­place him,” James said.

But that aside the ques­tion of whether the Prime Min­is­ter was set­ting the tone for a gen­er­al elec­tion arose.

Ra­goonath said it was a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty as well that the polls could be soon­er rather than lat­er.

He said cer­tain things are very telling for ex­am­ple the PNM (Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment) has al­ready start­ed se­lect­ing can­di­dates for con­stituen­cies cur­rent­ly held by the UNC (Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress) and it looks like they may be look­ing to short-cir­cuit the screen­ing process for their in­cum­bent seats.

“Bear­ing in mind the UNC has failed to get off the block in se­lect­ing can­di­dates. If the PNM wants to take ad­van­tage of a sit­u­a­tion, it can have an elec­tion be­fore De­cem­ber and the PNM will catch the UNC with their pants down lit­er­al­ly and they will take back the gov­ern­ment,” Ra­goonath said.

Notwith­stand­ing the spec­u­la­tion, Row­ley has not of­fered any clar­i­ty on his po­lit­i­cal fu­ture.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Prime Min­is­ter for more in­for­ma­tion on what he meant by his state­ments in the Low­er House but he did not re­spond up to late yes­ter­day evening.

Row­ley was first elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter in 2015 and again in 2020. He was ap­point­ed to the Par­lia­ment as a Sen­a­tor in 1987 and was sub­se­quent­ly elect­ed and re-elect­ed for nine con­sec­u­tive Par­lia­men­tary terms.

He is the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Diego Mar­tin West.