Joel Julien

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar need­ed a dis­trac­tion from her week­end pla­gia­rism em­bar­rass­ment and this was why she chose to read the non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Ltd, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, Row­ley said the move was “an act of des­per­a­tion” which has now put the project in “jeop­ardy.”

He made the state­ment dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s which was al­so at­tend­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan.

Af­ter Joe Biden was an­nounced Pres­i­dent-elect of the Unit­ed States on Sat­ur­day, a con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage was post­ed on Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s of­fi­cial Face­book page. How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar even­tu­al­ly had to apol­o­gise af­ter it was dis­cov­ered the con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage was pla­gia­rised from Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Op­po­si­tion in the UK Par­lia­ment.

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in “deep, deep, doo doo over that bit of dis­hon­esty.”

“And of course by Mon­day night, she need­ed a dis­trac­tion. She or­gan­ised her fo­rum on Mon­day and de­cid­ed to in­ter­fere, in­ter­vene, un­der­mine, lam­baste and de­stroy the Gov­ern­ment’s care­ful­ly laid plans and care­ful­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed po­si­tion with re­spect to the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, Paria and Pa­tri­ot­ic,” Row­ley said.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was grasp­ing at straws with her claims of un­der­hand­ed­ness with re­spect to the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“The an­swer is no, we have no­body un­der the ta­ble, we have no­body un­der the bed, we have no­body on the side,” Row­ley said, dis­miss­ing claims that the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready iden­ti­fied a pur­chas­er for the re­fin­ery and was sim­ply yank­ing Pa­tri­ot­ic’s chain.

Row­ley said claims by Per­sad-Bisses­sar that pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is re­quired to get the sale com­plet­ed was al­so “ab­solute tom­fool­ery.” He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was be­ing “de­lib­er­ate­ly de­vi­ous and de­struc­tive.”.

Row­ley not­ed, how­ev­er, that said her in­ten­tion was two-fold.

First­ly, he said she want­ed to scare bankers away from the project and sec­ond­ly, it was to launch a tirade against Pa­tri­ot­ic’s in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner Trafigu­ra with the goal of sab­o­tag­ing the en­tire deal.

Row­ley said Trafigu­ra is one of the world’s largest traders of oil and pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts.

Khan mean­while said al­though Per­sad-Bisses­sar tried to paint a grim pic­ture of Trafigu­ra, when she was prime min­is­ter the State did busi­ness to the tune of US$177 mil­lion with the com­pa­ny.

He said this coun­try has an in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion in en­er­gy cir­cles of ho­n­our­ing the sanc­ti­ty of con­fi­den­tial claus­es and non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments and Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ac­tions have the po­ten­tial of de­stroy­ing that per­cep­tion.

“What the Op­po­si­tion leader did is put a spear in the heart of these fun­da­men­tal con­cepts. We can hurt bad­ly as a na­tion in that re­gard as a Gov­ern­ment. We have to bring some clar­i­ty and san­i­ty to the sit­u­a­tion but in the con­text of this busi­ness what was done on Mon­day night by the leader of the op­po­si­tion is a car­di­nal sin against the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Khan said.

But Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment will not be “dis­tract­ed or side-tracked.”