Richard Lord

Min­utes af­ter re­ceiv­ing his in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment yes­ter­day, new Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­mand­ed that Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, who is al­so a vice-pres­i­dent of Fi­fa, give up one of the jobs. Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards pre­sent­ed Row­ley with his in­stru­ment, dur­ing a brief cer­e­mo­ny at Knowsley Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, short­ly af­ter 4 pm yes­ter­day. All Op­po­si­tion MPs ex­cept for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning at­tend­ed the brief cer­e­mo­ny. Al­so among the in­vit­ed guests were PNM chair­man Con­rad Enill, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don and Sharon Row­ley, the Op­po­si­tion Leader's wife.

In a brief ad­dress, Richards said he was con­fi­dent that Dr Row­ley "will be up to the task that lies ahead of him." Richards said he was cer­tain that Row­ley's el­e­va­tion to the post of Op­po­si­tion Leader would be jus­ti­fied. Row­ley de­scribed the ap­point­ment as "a sober­ing mo­ment" which he ac­cept­ed with great hu­mil­i­ty. He said pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty was one of the ma­jor is­sues fac­ing the peo­ple of T&T, "and it is in that con­text that I take this as­sign­ment as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion."

He said the PNM team in the Par­lia­ment would "en­sure that there is prop­er pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty and that the Gov­ern­ment will be held ac­count­able." Row­ley says the PNM team "see our­selves as part of the Gov­ern­ment of T&T.

"In the Par­lia­ment, we will sup­port every­thing that is good for the peo­ple of T&T and we'll op­pose every­thing that is bad for the peo­ple of T&T," he added. He said he want­ed his col­leagues to know that his man­age­ment style was one of del­e­ga­tion. Lat­er, at his first news brief­ing at Knowsley Build­ing, Row­ley said he was about to write a let­ter to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion "for an opin­ion on whether it was prop­er for a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment to hold of­fice in any or­gan­i­sa­tion, es­pe­cial­ly a fee-pay­ing of­fice out­side of the Cab­i­net." He said: "As far a I am con­cerned, Mr Warn­er has to choose to be (ei­ther) a Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tive or a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go...He can­not be both!" Row­ley said he had "some se­ri­ous con­cerns" about the mat­ter be­cause a T&T Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter is a full-time job.

Row­ley, a long-stand­ing MP, said he was not aware of any cab­i­net min­is­ter in this coun­try ever be­ing al­lowed to hold ex­ec­u­tive or any au­thor­i­ty out­side the min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio. "If it is that we are chang­ing the rules to suit an in­di­vid­ual–pow­er­ful and use­ful as he might be–this is ex­act­ly what we don't want in this stage of our de­vel­op­ment," he in­sist­ed. He said this was es­pe­cial­ly so when the na­tion was fo­cus­ing on im­proved ac­count­abil­i­ty, re­build­ing of trust in the Gov­ern­ment. He said that must not on­ly be done, but be seen to be done. Row­ley said new Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar must re­spond to this de­vel­op­ment.

He said there is a view in the coun­try that she "is hostage to pow­er­ful forces, and if it is that (Warn­er's) ap­point­ment was made as a re­sult of the in­di­vid­ual be­ing who he is, the Prime Min­is­ter has to ac­count to us for be­ing supine when she should have stood up and said 'no you can't serve in the Cab­i­net as well as in Fi­fa.'" Row­ley said if the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion said it was okay for Warn­er to hold the two po­si­tions, he would con­tin­ue to be strong­ly op­posed to it. Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the list of six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors, Row­ley said it would be re­vealed at his Charles Street, Port-of-Spain of­fice on Wednes­day morn­ing. He said the chief whip would al­so be an­nounced at that time.

He de­scribed the process of con­sul­ta­tions to se­lect the sen­a­tors as be­ing "wide and deep, and I in­tend to se­lect the six best per­sons who are avail­able to the PNM at this time." He said he hoped to fi­nalise the names this week­end. Row­ley said one could ex­pect a mix­ture of youth and ex­pe­ri­ence and new faces in the team. He not­ed, how­ev­er, that the task "is very daunt­ing." Row­ley said the May 24 de­feat of the PNM at the polls was not as bad as the 33 to three loss in 1986 at the hands of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR). "On this oc­ca­sion, the cup­board is not bare," he added. On the is­sue of the PNM's elec­tion of a new po­lit­i­cal leader on June 27, Row­ley said he has of­fered him­self for the po­si­tion and was re­ceiv­ing "tremen­dous sup­port from across the coun­try and I look for­ward to a suc­cess­ful re­sult."