CHARLES KONG SOO

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has to come up with more cre­ative an­swers and it is disin­gen­u­ous of him to say he didn’t know about the com­po­si­tion of Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent, Del­cy Ro­driguez’s del­e­ga­tion in their meet­ing.

He was re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions about the dis­pute be­tween the Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar who called the Prime Min­is­ter a “shame­less Ju­das” on so­cial me­dia Sat­ur­day af­ter he re­ferred to her as a “trai­tor” in his ad­dress to the me­dia on Fri­day.

Ra­goonath said, “No­body goes to the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice with­out him know­ing who’s com­ing, cre­den­tials are checked.”

“He can­not ex­pect us to be­lieve that peo­ple can end up in the PM’s Of­fice or Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre with­out prop­er pro­to­cols; it is poor taste to give us that kind of sto­ry.

“It’s the po­lit­i­cal sil­ly sea­son if any sanc­tions were im­posed on T&T, the blame will be on Kam­la by the PM, the same tune the PNM has been singing since 2015 and will con­tin­ue un­til the elec­tion.”

“Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young had to be aware of the flight de­tails of the air­craft that trans­port­ed the 33 Trinidad na­tion­als who were in quar­an­tine in Bar­ba­dos and the no­tion that the US-sanc­tioned PDVSA air­craft was the civ­il avi­a­tion’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty dur­ing a pe­ri­od of lock­down is want­i­ng.”

He said the in­for­ma­tion that Per­sad-Bisses­sar brought in­to the pub­lic do­main the cit­i­zen­ry of T&T should have an­swers to and not sim­ply brushed off as com­ing from Madea, a crazy or vin­dic­tive la­dy or a trai­tor, the peo­ple were too in­tel­li­gent for that.

Econ­o­mist and for­mer PNM Min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Browne said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­mind­ed him of the char­ac­ter Sgt Schultz in the sit­u­a­tion com­e­dy Hogan’s He­roes with his fa­mous tagline, “I know noth­ing”.

He said Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s press con­fer­ence raised many more ques­tions than it an­swered and asked rhetor­i­cal­ly as a mat­ter of pro­to­col if Row­ley did not know who the men ac­com­pa­ny­ing the Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez were.

Browne asked if some­one would al­low peo­ple in their house that they did not know, worse yet in­to a meet­ing with your Prime Min­is­ter, what would his se­cu­ri­ty have done?