Shal­iza Has­sanali

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Dr Kei­th Row­ley has wad­ed in­to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for shut­ting down the coun­try be­cause of the threat of trop­i­cal storm Tomas. Row­ley said the clo­sure of busi­ness­es, schools and of­fices on Fri­day by the Gov­ern­ment was an over­re­ac­tion and he hoped that cit­i­zens would not en­counter such chaos again. "And I hope that every time it looks like it's go­ing to rain we are not go­ing to shut this coun­try down," he said yes­ter­day. Row­ley was de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at a small gath­er­ing of women at the par­ty's Women in Pol­i­tics sem­i­nar at par­ty head­quar­ters Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain.

The func­tion was at­tend­ed by PNM stal­warts Mar­i­lyn Gor­don, for­mer min­is­ter Joan Yuille-Williams and MP Don­na Cox. In the past few weeks Row­ley said, min­is­ters in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment have been parad­ing as great do­ers when­ev­er there was a flood. "They start­ed to play pol­i­tics with that." In so do­ing, Row­ley said, the staff at the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) was den­i­grat­ed and hu­mil­i­at­ed which re­sult­ed in many leav­ing in dis­grace "against the shouts and clam­ours of politi­cians to get out of of­fice."

Row­ley said the new staff at the ODPM in des­per­a­tion to please "had over­act­ed to the point where they shut the coun­try down yes­ter­day morn­ing caus­ing mil­lions in loss­es and in­con­ve­nience well be­yond what any storm might have caused." Row­ley said the shut­down was a re­sult of lack of prop­er gov­er­nance. "Be­cause you have a woman in charge does not guar­an­tee you good gov­er­nance. Be­cause if you have good gov­er­nance you would not have had the pub­lic hu­mil­i­a­tion of ODPM staff and you would not have had staff kiss­ing up to the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate."

Row­ley said while thou­sands of cit­i­zens pan­icked, the coun­try had seen the best weath­er in five years. "This is a small ex­pres­sion of how things can go wrong with far-reach­ing con­se­quences when the mo­tives are not right." In­sist­ing that the women in the PNM are a force to be reck­oned with, Row­ley called on them to let their voic­es be heard on is­sues of na­tion­al im­por­tance–the econ­o­my and the lack of prop­er par­ent­hood. "Our econ­o­my, as we speak, is dri­ving to a halt. Prices are ris­ing to an un­re­strained man­ner with very few voic­es ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment what they are do­ing about it."