Every Prime Min­is­ter has his share of mem­o­rable quotes.

Dr Er­ic Williams’ quotes were na­tion-build­ing, Bas­deo Pan­day was of­ten sharp and wit­ty, but Dr Kei­th Row­ley was a Prime Min­is­ter tai­lor-made for the “meme” era. His sharp, some­times acer­bic re­torts were per­fect for “video re­ac­tions” or gifs—videos that de­scribed how you felt bet­ter than you ever could your­self. 

“Dotish!” or “Fool­ish­ness” or “Pop­py­cock!” 

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley’s straight-shoot­ing nev­er minced words, es­pe­cial­ly in de­fence of his truth, if he felt his words were be­ing mis­con­strued or there was de­lib­er­ate mis­in­for­ma­tion be­ing ped­dled.

It would be the pan­dem­ic and Row­ley’s week­ly, hour-long press con­fer­ences where he’d show his full met­tle. 

“As of mid­night tonight…” still re­mains four haunt­ing words which fol­lowed some new im­po­si­tion. 

He’d send so­cial me­dia in­to a tail­spin when, quot­ing a ca­lyp­so, which en­cap­su­lat­ed the sen­ti­ments of those call­ing for cit­i­zens to be re­spon­si­ble. He said, “Don’t jack*** the thing!” 

Or when he felt the pub­lic was over­ly scep­ti­cal about the vac­cine but would use all kinds of untest­ed reme­dies he said, “Who in this au­di­ence will tell me what is the side ef­fect of us­ing horny goat weed?”

In ex­plain­ing the strict quar­an­tine pol­i­cy he sent every­one to their edi­tions of Cote Ci Cote La to look up the mean­ing of the words man­i­mar or has­sikara—re­fer­ring to peo­ple who cre­at­ed chaos over the quar­an­tine arrange­ments. 

“You on­ly come out af­ter a cer­tain con­di­tion is met. And that con­di­tion is not to call up ir­re­spon­si­ble politi­cians in Trinidad and To­ba­go who then start to make has­sikara to de­mand that all the plans that we put in place should be dis­re­gard­ed.”

Row­ley even post­ed a copy of the de­f­i­n­i­tion to his Face­book page with the quote.

Dr Jo Ann Fer­reira, UWI lec­tur­er in lin­guis­tics said proverbs ba­si­cal­ly sum­marise the wis­dom of the el­ders and tra­di­tion­al wis­dom has passed on through the years through speech. 

She said for Row­ley, as a To­bag­on­ian, he’d know how the pub­lic per­ceived him as well, which is why he would lean in­to that speech. 

And as a pub­lic fig­ure, he could eas­i­ly switch be­tween an of­fi­cial lan­guage and a ver­nac­u­lar lan­guage. 

“I think any­body who has lan­guage sen­si­tiv­i­ty has been raised with peo­ple who have a strong con­nec­tion to their lan­guage and iden­ti­ty, will be free to use it in cer­tain cir­cum­stances to ap­peal, to ei­ther ap­peal to peo­ple, or put peo­ple in their place,” she said. 

Row­ley of­ten used the ver­nac­u­lar to dress down, like when the bor­ders re­mained closed, Row­ley told a sto­ry of a friend who reached out to him hop­ing to get an ex­emp­tion to come home. How­ev­er, at the time, the ex­emp­tions were on­ly valid for T&T pass­port hold­ers.  But his friend, hav­ing dual cit­i­zen­ship had let his T&T pass­port ex­pire. 

“I say stay dey!” Row­ley re­count­ed. “They say dog foot break he find him mas­ter yard!” 

“That’s a good one. I haven’t heard that in a long time,” Dr Win­ford James said re­call­ing the state­ment. “So you go to the place of com­fort. That’s what is hap­pen­ing there. When you’re in trou­ble, you go to the place of com­fort.”

James’ de­gree fo­cus­es on lan­guages and lin­guis­tics. He said Row­ley was an in­tel­lec­tu­al like Dr Er­ic Williams be­fore him but pre­ferred the use of col­lo­qui­al­ism to stan­dard Eng­lish. James said Row­ley is al­so a ‘limer’ so he would be more in­clined to use those turns of phras­es.

As far as ef­fec­tive­ness, James said Row­ley’s were coun­ter­bal­anced with some­times the harsh truths that came with them.

“If he could have kept to just the say­ings and not have the neg­a­tives as­so­ci­at­ed with some of the state­ments that he made, that would have been very good for him. The prob­lem with him is that he says these, these very in­ter­est­ing things and at the same time, he comes out and says things that peo­ple are not hap­py with him about. So the ques­tion is the kind of bal­ance that he should have main­tained with a state­ment that could have made him like­able, or could have im­proved his lik­a­bil­i­ty.”

One such state­ment that’s re­ver­ber­at­ed for years, would be his re­it­er­a­tion over the fu­ture of Petrotrin. 

“The Gov­ern­ment is not clos­ing down Petrotrin and in case you were just open­ing your fridge and you didn’t hear that when you closed the door, let me re­peat it, the Gov­ern­ment is not clos­ing Petrotrin!” Row­ley said.

In ear­ly 2017, the out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter al­so came un­der fire for telling women to choose their men wise­ly.

“I am not in your bed­room. I am not in your choice of men,” he said then. 

Row­ley al­so used his farm­ing back­ground to en­hance his de­scrip­tors. As a farmer, he had his unique say­ings. In 2019 he de­railed a press con­fer­ence full of re­porters when he asked if Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had “pip.”  The mem­bers of the me­dia who had nev­er heard the term used up con­sid­er­able time ask­ing him to ex­plain the term. 

“If you had grown up the way I had grown up, rais­ing yard fowl, you would know there is some­thing called pip. And when the fowl has pip, it can’t feed. So it is not all the time that peo­ple like Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar can talk, some­times they have pip and if she has pip she can’t talk,” Row­ley ex­plained. 

Even in his last in­ter­view, which aired Thurs­day night, he de­scribed how he felt af­ter go­ing out of his way to in­tro­duce a young Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led ad­min­is­tra­tion in­to gov­er­nance on­ly to be be­trayed, “You who do good for jumbie, is you jumbie eh fright­en.” 

Cab­i­net shares their

favourite quotes

 Guardian Me­dia reached out to Cab­i­net Min­is­ters to ask them which of Row­ley’s quotes stood out to them. 

In 2020 Ran­dall Mitchell was not cho­sen to re­con­test his San Fer­nan­do East seat. 

Mitchell said to Guardian Me­dia, “A few days lat­er, in a short, pri­vate phone call with me, he ut­tered, ‘You nev­er know where wind does come from to lean fowl tail’.”

Mitchell ad­mit­ted he had to look it up. But said his un­der­stand­ing was that it meant, ‘You nev­er know how quick­ly and how un­ex­pect­ed­ly things can change for the bet­ter.’

Mitchell, the Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, will con­test the La Brea seat in the up­com­ing elec­tion.

For For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne, the most im­por­tant ad­vice he said the Prime Min­is­ter gave him was,  “Amery when you stand on prin­ci­ple, his­to­ry will al­ways judge you kind­ly, and your de­ci­sions will stand the test of time.”

Scot­land al­so re­called Row­ley talk­ing about how dif­fi­cult Trinidad and To­ba­go is to gov­ern.

“If you throw a bot­tle in the air in In­de­pen­dence Square, any head it land on has an idea of how to gov­ern!” Scot­land quot­ed. 

Both Min­is­ters Browne and Scot­land al­so said the same phrase stood out to them.

“When you are in charge even if it is for a day...TAKE CHARGE!” 

They un­der­stood it to mean, don’t lead halfway when you have to lead in any ca­pac­i­ty or at any lev­el.

For Stu­art Young two sim­ple quotes stuck out, “work is for young peo­ple,” and “make de­ci­sions based on prin­ci­ples.”

Young said for him they mean, “Dr Row­ley al­ways en­cour­aged his Cab­i­net to work hard, to give your best and to serve the pop­u­la­tion. There would be dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions and choic­es to make along the way but once you stuck to prin­ci­ple it would al­ways work out even­tu­al­ly if not im­me­di­ate­ly. Gov­ern­ing is not for the weak heart­ed but it is very re­ward­ing to con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.” 

Young has few quota­bles of his own ex­cept for an over­re­liance on the word “etcetera” and the oc­ca­sion­al “ste­ups”, but there’s time yet.