Shas­tri Boodan

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says his fight with Works�and Trans­port Min­is­ter Austin "Jack" Warn­er is not per­son­al. "It is the prin­ci­ple of a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment not stick­ing to the Code of Ethics of the Par­lia­ment and con­fin­ing ac­tiv­i­ties to full-time du­ties for the peo­ple of T&T," Row­ley said. He was speak­ing with the Guardian af­ter he held a meet­ing with PNM sup­port­ers from cen­tral Trinidad at Cou­va West Sec­ondary School, Bal­isi­er Street, on Wednes­day night.

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion said the Code of Ethics for par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, in­clud­ing min­is­ters, re­quired that "Cab­i­net min­is­ters di­vest them­selves of their pri­vate in­ter­ests up­on their as­sump­tion of pub­lic of­fice." Row­ley said it was not per­mis­si­ble for a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter to hold di­rec­tor­ship and ex­ter­nal em­ploy­ment while a min­is­ter. He said all he was do­ing was his job, by point­ing�this out so it could be rec­ti­fied. Row­ley al­so knocked the Gov­ern­ment's hous­ing pol­i­cy, and plans by the UNC-led Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship to dis­trib­ute lap­tops to school­child­ren.

He said there were fears that the UNC might scrap the hous­ing plans set in mo­tion by the PNM and that would lead to the death of the na­tion­al con­struc­tion�pro­gramme and leave the tens of thou­sands of peo­ple want­i­ng hous­ing in lim­bo. Row­ley said the plans to give a lap­tops to school­child­ren might be flawed with sev­er­al prob­lems, in­clud­ing the se­cu­ri­ty, main­te­nance and up­grade of these com­put­ers. He said the com­put­ers should in­stead re­main in schools where all stu­dents could use them in a se­cured and mon­i­tored en­vi­ron­ment. Row­ley praised PNM sup­port­ers in cen­tral Trinidad for their years of strug­gle in op­po­si­tion ter­ri­to­ry and their ded­i­ca­tion to the par­ty. He was en­dorsed for leader by PN­Mites from Cou­va North, Cou­va South, Ca­roni Cen­tral and Tabaquite.

Row­ley said he planned to re­build his par­ty and make it more at­trac­tive to the wider pop­u­la­tion to make it the par­ty of choice for all na­tion­als. PN­Mites who at­tend­ed the meet­ing said they be­lieved the PNM could rise again un­der Row­ley. A mid­dle-aged sup­port­er said plans to strength­en the PNM's youth league and women's arms were afoot. The sup­port­er, from the HDC hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, said the par­ty would be keep­ing a "hawk's eye" on gov­ern­ment min­is­ters who had em­ploy­ment on the out­side. He said, how­ev­er, that PN­Mites feared that the Gov­ern­ment might use its ma­jor­i­ty in the Par­lia­ment to throw�out the�leg­is­la­tion�and thus al­low gov­ern­ment min­is­ters to have pri­vate prac­tices. He said he per­son­al­ly planned to look care­ful­ly and see which com­pa­ny got the con­tract to bring in the com­put­ers.