Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley fi­nal­ly broke his si­lence on the ar­rest and sub­se­quent charge of for­mer Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald and the pub­lic fall­out from same.

PM Row­ley mount­ed a spir­it­ed de­fence of his de­ci­sion to three times hire Mc­Don­ald in­to the Cab­i­net al­though there had been ques­tions raised about her char­ac­ter and al­le­ga­tions in the pub­lic do­main about fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety.

Ac­cord­ing to the PM, he spoke with Ms Mc­Don­ald and she as­sured him there was no ve­rac­i­ty in the al­le­ga­tions and more than that, she had been cleared by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, a body Row­ley has in the past chas­tised for its modus operan­di.

It is the de­ci­sion to move ahead with an ap­point­ment in the face of ques­tions raised about the char­ac­ter of the per­son who was not on­ly ap­point­ed min­is­ter but whom he felt should be his deputy and was ini­tial­ly re­spon­si­ble for the PNM’s Par­lia­men­tary cau­cus, that leads many to ques­tion the Prime Min­is­ter’s judge­ment.

That Dr Row­ley was pre­pared to of­fer a con­di­tion­al ac­cep­tance that this ill-fat­ed ap­point­ment was not one of his bet­ter de­ci­sions is but a tiny step for­ward.

This pa­per takes no po­si­tion about the in­no­cence or guilt of Ms Mc­Don­ald and her co-ac­cused. This is a mat­ter for the courts to de­cide and we urge that the wheels of jus­tice move swift­ly to de­ter­mine in­no­cence or guilt.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so in­sist­ed that this was a sign that for the first time, a gov­ern­ment was pre­pared to take ac­tion against white-col­lar crime. He ar­gued that the ca­pac­i­ty of the Po­lice Ser­vice to pur­sue white-col­lar crim­i­nals, be they politi­cians, pub­lic ser­vants or con­trac­tors, did not, in the pub­lic’s eyes, ex­ist in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Row­ley al­so said the ap­point­ment of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith, with­out sup­port from the Op­po­si­tion UNC, and the lack of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence is what has led to the re­cent charg­ing of his for­mer Cab­i­net col­league.

Com­ing from a per­son who served for a decade in a Cab­i­net run by the late prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, it is wor­ry­ing that Dr Row­ley is now of the view that this is the first time the po­lice are be­ing al­lowed a lev­el of in­de­pen­dence. That this epiphany has oc­curred is it­self wor­ry­ing. Nonethe­less, we wel­come the com­mit­ment from the Prime Min­is­ter to the in­de­pen­dence of the Po­lice Ser­vice.

Row­ley al­so talked about the build­ing of a new so­ci­ety, one in which lead­ers, in­clud­ing politi­cians, are held to the high­est stan­dards. Where those who com­mit white-col­lar crime are as sought af­ter by the po­lice as those who com­mit oth­er crim­i­nal of­fences.

But this is no panacea and its what any mod­ern so­ci­ety de­mands. We have to build a so­ci­ety where no one is above the law and where jus­tice on time is for all and not just for those who find them­selves at the low­er end of the so­cial lad­der.