Gail Alexan­der

Mex­i­co has asked Cari­com to join its le­gal fight to hold US gun man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors re­spon­si­ble for the crime may­hem their weapons of de­struc­tion have been used to un­leash in some coun­tries - and T&T is ac­tive­ly con­sid­er­ing the re­quest.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed this last night at the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's pub­lic meet­ing at Barataria Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre. It was the PNM’s first pub­lic meet­ing for 2023.

On Mex­i­co’s re­quest, Row­ley said, “T&T is ac­tive­ly con­sid­er­ing that to test the le­gal­i­ty of those who make those weapons of war that are de­stroy­ing our so­ci­eties – we have to join that fight.”

Row­ley said he sus­pects the pro­posed le­gal bat­tle, which will be un­der­tak­en in the US courts, is one of the things that will come out of the Cari­com Crime Sym­po­sium that will be held here in T&T from April 16-17. He not­ed that he is re­spon­si­ble for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in the Cari­com qua­si-Cab­i­net for­mat.

“If you ask me what I want out of this con­fer­ence, over and above ed­u­cat­ing our pop­u­la­tion, I want Cari­com to speak as one voice to our ma­jor trad­ing part­ner – our friend in the north, with one voice to say to them: Amer­i­ca must do more to pre­vent guns from com­ing from Amer­i­ca in­to our coun­try!”

He said the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment had al­ready un­der­tak­en a sim­i­lar le­gal fight be­fore and lost in the US court but is pre­pared to keep it up, but with oth­er sov­er­eign na­tions af­fect­ed by the gun scourge, hence the re­quest to Cari­com.

Row­ley al­so recog­nised the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions’ re­cent com­plaints of things not go­ing well and lack of staffing. He said Gov­ern­ment had found ex­ec­u­tive of­fices for the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions di­vi­sion, but af­ter three years there has not been a “foot­step in­side the of­fice.. and we’re pay­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in rent…”

“I don’t want to use the words I want to use be­cause that would be telling you too much – but you come and telling me an ex­ec­u­tive of­fice for a bank is not good for the DPP Of­fice?”

He said there was a three-year con­tract for this, "pay­ing mil­lions…be­tween the DPP of­fice and TTPS Spe­cial Branch … some­thing… went on there.”

“They want bul­let-proof glass. Months pass­ing, we put bul­let-proof glass in the build­ing…(then) they want a wall… a wall out­side the bul­let-proof glass… when it reach to the point the land­lord say ‘Don’t in­ter­fere any­more with my build­ing’.”

He said while it was easy to blame the Gov­ern­ment, the lat­ter was sim­ply a se­ries of strands in a fab­ric and the Cab­i­net was sim­ply the weaver.

Row­ley al­so ac­cused Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of ly­ing about the PNM hav­ing a smear cam­paign and slan­der ma­chine against her par­ty, af­ter the Pi­ar­co Three cor­rup­tion mat­ter against for­mer UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day, his wife Oma and two oth­ers was dropped this week.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar knew what she was do­ing, since it could af­fect oth­er cas­es. He al­so ac­cused her of try­ing to make the Gov­ern­ment stop prob­ing white-col­lar crime.

Say­ing a case is go­ing on cur­rent­ly in Flori­da with one of those (Pi­ar­co) mat­ters, Row­ley asked if Per­sad-Bisses­sar was say­ing the judge should throw it out as it’s “PNM per­se­cu­tion.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment was al­so fight­ing cas­es in oth­er places and when a for­mer prime min­is­ter told the world that the po­lit­i­cal par­ty in of­fice had a “smear and slan­der” cam­paign and peo­ple shouldn’t be held ac­count­able, peo­ple should ”… re­ject that!”

He said the re­marks al­so cre­at­ed the en­vi­ron­ment to cre­at more cor­rup­tion and had a tinge of racism in it.

On the hu­man traf­fick­ing al­le­ga­tions against a mem­ber of the UNC in the pub­lic do­main, Row­ley said the UNC MP who ques­tioned him about the US 2022 Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons re­port re­cent­ly, and who may have want­ed to at­tack a col­league, had on­ly to “turn around" and do that rather than ask him about the re­port. Not­ing that one for­mer UNC min­is­ter talked about the is­sue with per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence and an­oth­er ex-min­is­ter al­so did so, he said, “If an al­li­ga­tor came out of the rivers and tell you tongue dirty, don’t doubt him...”

Al­so slam­ming Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim to vin­di­ca­tion on the Email­gate is­sue, Row­ley re­count­ed the mat­ter, the let­ter by the as­sis­tant DPP on the is­sue and state­ments by for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney in Par­lia­ment on the is­sue. Row­ley queried how Per­sad-Bisses­sar could stain his name.

”It will take a box of Breeze and a scrub­bing brush of steel to wash off from that woman what she had done to this coun­try!” he said.

Ad­dress­ing the re­cent scourge of school vi­o­lence and youth in­volve­ment in crime, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so ap­pealed for par­ents to pay at­ten­tion to their chil­dren, say­ing there are too many who aren’t do­ing so, leav­ing them to teach­ers, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and Gov­ern­ment.