GUARDIAN ME­DIA IN­VES­TI­GA­TIONS DESK

In 2024, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s lead­er­ship chal­lenges cul­mi­nat­ed in a State of Emer­gency (SoE) be­ing de­clared two days be­fore the start of the new year.

As it turned out, 2024 was the blood­i­est record­ed year in T&T’s his­to­ry- 624 mur­ders.

In Jan­u­ary 2024, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had called for an SoE, but Dr Row­ley dis­missed the sug­ges­tion.

“Two points came out of their (the UNC’s) crime talks—so­lu­tion num­ber one: state of emer­gency, well, if that was go­ing to be your pro­pos­al, you didn’t need no crime talks, you could have told us that long time. You could have saved us the trou­ble of think­ing that you had some­thing use­ful to say,” he had said then.

But the coun­try’s mur­der toll, 11 months lat­er, led Dr Row­ley to im­ple­ment an SoE.

The coun­try’s climb­ing crime rate was just one of the rea­sons that Dr Row­ley was pro­lif­ic. When it wasn’t gov­er­nance is­sues in the man­age­ment of the coun­try or its po­si­tion on is­sues raised in ed­i­to­ri­als, con­cern over the state and per­for­mance of state en­ter­pris­es, the for­eign ex­change is­sue, or ques­tions about the com­pe­ten­cy of peo­ple he ap­point­ed to posts, there were par­ty is­sues on the lead­er­ship chal­lenge he caused af­ter he dis­closed in Par­lia­ment what was de­scribed as his swan song. That de­ci­sion was on­ly ce­ment­ed on Fri­day evening when he said he would not seek re-elec­tion in the gen­er­al elec­tion con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due this year.

In No­vem­ber, the Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion to ac­cept salary in­creas­es pro­posed by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) for Row­ley and oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cials re­ceived wide­spread con­dem­na­tion. His salary in­creased from $59,000 to $87,000 and he was set to re­ceive $1 mil­lion in back­pay.

“The rec­om­men­da­tions have come af­ter work that I be­lieve has been good work and I am pre­pared to ac­cept their work. As far as I’m con­cerned that is the end of the sto­ry. Whether it is fair or not is not the point. Those who were giv­en the as­sign­ment to do it, they have done it, these are the rec­om­men­da­tions, and I ac­cept it with­out more on this oc­ca­sion,” Dr Row­ley said.

The col­lapse of the coun­try’s in­tel­li­gence agency, the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), hap­pened in March un­der the stew­ard­ship of Dr Row­ley as chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and Fitzger­ald Hinds as the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

On his per­son­al Face­book page, Dr Row­ley took is­sue with news­pa­per ed­i­to­ri­als and in Au­gust he crit­i­cised the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) for plan­ning to ask re­turn­ing of­fi­cers to de­clare their po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance to qual­i­fy for their po­si­tions in fu­ture elec­tions.

“The po­si­tion of the EBC to ques­tion EBC staff about their vote is AB­SOLUTE­LY UN­AC­CEPT­ABLE. The vote in this coun­try is se­cret and no per­son in pub­lic em­ploy­ment must be forced to re­veal how he or she vot­ed or in­tends to vote. Re­turn­ing of­fi­cers are not to com­ply with this strange and dis­turb­ing de­vel­op­ment at the EBC …The PNM, which has not been con­sult­ed on this mat­ter, is res­olute­ly op­posed to this un­nec­es­sary and pos­si­bly il­le­gal ac­tion. Where did this come from?” he said.

In Au­gust, Row­ley sparked a na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion when he an­nounced at a PNM spe­cial con­ven­tion that the coat of arms would be changed to re­move Christo­pher Colum­bus’ three ships.

“You see them three Colum­bus ships in the em­blem? They will go. Since we have enough votes in Par­lia­ment to do it, I could an­nounce now that as soon as the leg­isla­tive ad­just­ment is made—and that ad­just­ment should be made be­fore the 24th of Sep­tem­ber—we then over a six-month pe­ri­od will re­place Colum­bus’ three ships, the San­ta Maria, the Pin­ta, and the Niña, with the steel­pan,” Row­ley said.

But it is crime and gov­er­nance is­sues which have plagued the coun­try in the past year, and Dr Row­ley’s re­spons­es to them made him the biggest news­mak­er of 2024.

Crime

On the is­sue of crime sup­pres­sion and crime man­age­ment, Dr Row­ley left it up to the ju­di­cia­ry and the TTPS to do their jobs and has of­ten cast blame on them for their in­abil­i­ty to re­duce crime.

In March 2024, dur­ing Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter in San Fer­nan­do, Dr Row­ley said law-abid­ing cit­i­zens felt wronged by some ju­di­cial state­ments made ‘in favour’ of crim­i­nals.

“I think that very many peo­ple be­lieve that more can be done at the lev­el of the Ju­di­cia­ry. And this is not be­ing crit­i­cal of any par­tic­u­lar judge or the Ju­di­cia­ry as a struc­ture or en­ti­ty of our gov­er­nance…But we be­lieve that there are times when we see cer­tain de­ci­sions that [make] the crim­i­nals smile.

“The gen­er­al sen­ti­ment, I think, is that the crim­i­nals feel bet­ter off in the court than out on the streets be­cause some­times one gets the im­pres­sion that the care and at­ten­tion of the rights of the crim­i­nal su­per­sedes the trau­ma of the vic­tim … We have to un­der­stand that a bal­ance is re­quired be­tween pro­tect­ing the rights of the crim­i­nals and against pro­tect­ing the rights of the vic­tims. Law-abid­ing cit­i­zens re­al­ly are feel­ing hard-done-by by some of the de­ci­sions made in favour of crim­i­nals.”

Al­so in March, Dr Row­ley said there were too many de­lays in the ju­di­cial sys­tem.

“When I grew up, we were no more bar­barous than we are now, and when I grew up, if you were charged for mur­der you had no bail to get, and I nev­er know about any­body killing any wit­ness. But in this en­vi­ron­ment, we are now talk­ing about Eng­lish con­di­tions where you get bail for mur­der and you come out and you have a gun again. What the hell did you ex­pect?”

Three months lat­er, at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, he ex­pressed be­muse­ment up­on learn­ing that some­one had been re­leased on bond af­ter be­ing charged with kid­nap­ping.

Two weeks ago, Row­ley ap­pealed to the TTPS to make crim­i­nals more un­com­fort­able with pen­e­tra­tive de­tec­tion meth­ods.

“The gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to pro­vide full sup­port to the po­lice and oth­er agen­cies and en­cour­ages all stake­hold­ers from the home to the cour­t­house to pro­vide no safe har­bour and com­fort to the crim­i­nal el­e­ment which be­lieves that it can plan, ex­e­cute and ter­rorise the na­tion with im­puni­ty,” he said.

As for the peo­ple ap­point­ed to deal with crime, Dr Row­ley said he was the one per­son who could not crit­i­cise the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. In ad­di­tion, he did not bow to fre­quent calls to re­move Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds.

Gov­er­nance

In March, de­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to im­ple­ment prop­er­ty tax, Row­ley said the mea­sure was not oner­ous and the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple op­posed to it lived abroad.

In April, he de­fend­ed the cost of his over­seas busi­ness trav­els, say­ing it added bil­lions of dol­lars to the coun­try’s purse. A few days ear­li­er, Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal had re­vealed that $10.6 mil­lion was spent on 19 trips over three years.

“If I have to in­vest $10 mil­lion in trav­el to get $17 bil­lion, I will do that every day. I am not a Prime Min­is­ter who trav­els for trav­el­ling sake. I in­di­cat­ed to this coun­try that I am this coun­try’s num­ber one sales­man and I led from the front in rene­go­ti­at­ing and open­ing terms of con­tracts which were ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Row­ley said.

In May, Dr Row­ley de­scribed the im­passe be­tween the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the Fi­nance Min­istry as “un­nec­es­sary, dan­ger­ous bac­cha­nal.”

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass were at odds for weeks af­ter the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al al­leged she was be­ing forced to add in­for­ma­tion to her au­dit re­port out­side of the stip­u­lat­ed time frame.

“I am quite sur­prised at this de­vel­op­ment and very dis­ap­point­ed that it would have hap­pened. There is an in­ves­ti­ga­tion tak­ing place and I, like every­one else, would want to see what the in­ves­ti­ga­tion says be­cause this is not the kind of thing that I an­tic­i­pat­ed. As Prime Min­is­ter of the coun­try, I don’t take it light­ly that a pub­lic of­fi­cial, es­pe­cial­ly one in au­dit, says to the rest of the world that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter is en­gaged in back­dat­ing the books. That is a very, very se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion with far-reach­ing con­se­quences,” Row­ley said.

In June, in re­sponse to out­rage ex­pressed by the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union about the Gov­ern­ment en­gag­ing In­di­an mag­nate Naveen Jin­dal about the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, Dr Row­ley said there seemed to be an at­tempt to dis­suade for­eign­ers from in­vest­ing in T&T.

“In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, it’s com­ing from the same peo­ple who would say from time to time there is not enough di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment. One of the fail­ures of the Gov­ern­ment is that we need more di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment. Are we not get­ting it?

“And lo and be­hold, we now have the po­ten­tial for for­eign in­vest­ment from a place where there are peo­ple who want to in­vest abroad and who are in­vest­ing abroad, and we are say­ing, well, if you’re in­vest­ing in Oman and Qatar and Dubai and stay­ing wher­ev­er you are, con­sid­er Trinidad and To­ba­go. And that seems to be up­set­ting some peo­ple,” he said.

The SSA saga be­gan in March when the Of­fice of the PM is­sued a re­lease, signed by Dr Row­ley, stat­ing that the head of the in­tel­li­gence agency, Re­tired Ma­jor Roger Best, had been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave based on in­for­ma­tion from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice. Three days lat­er, he said the in­for­ma­tion war­rant­ed dras­tic in­ter­ven­tion.

In May, days af­ter Best was ar­rest­ed with three oth­ers from the agency, Row­ley said the gov­ern­ment had been blind­sided.

“There are im­pres­sions of crim­i­nal con­duct which are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by those in au­thor­i­ty to do that. And where it fell to the Cab­i­net to act on per­sons who were hav­ing the sup­port of the Cab­i­net to do their jobs if they fell short in that way, the Cab­i­net did not hes­i­tate to act,” he said.

In Ju­ly, he told Par­lia­ment that an au­dit in­to the SSA found it was be­ing run un­der the in­flu­ence of a re­li­gious cult “which was arm­ing it­self while preach­ing a doc­trine for trained mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary per­son­nel with a re­li­gious call­ing to be the most suit­able to re­place the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship.”

He added: “But that is not all, Madam Speak­er. Shock­ing­ly, the au­dit dis­cov­ered that the for­mer di­rec­tor of the SSA ini­ti­at­ed the pro­cure­ment of high-grade mil­i­tary bolt-ac­tion ri­fles, com­plete with the most mod­ern si­lencers and oth­er ac­ces­sories; and the SSA was en­gaged in train­ing spe­cial­ly se­lect­ed, ques­tion­ably hired per­son­nel in the skill of the use of such weapons.”

PNM mat­ters

In Jan­u­ary, at the PNM’s 68th an­niver­sary par­ty, Dr Row­ley re­vealed that he is con­tem­plat­ing re­tire­ment. That lat­er evolved in­to a longer state­ment to Par­lia­ment in Oc­to­ber.

In Au­gust, he said that an im­por­tant part of his lega­cy as PNM leader would be to en­sure the par­ty’s long-term sta­bil­i­ty and fu­ture.

“One thing that I can point to and I want to point to is while I was the leader of the PNM, I en­sured that at the ap­pro­pri­ate time, the ap­pro­pri­ate tran­si­tion was made and the PNM, the or­gan­i­sa­tion of the PNM is left in good hands for pos­ter­i­ty and for the fu­ture,” he said.

At his first press con­fer­ence for 2025, Dr Row­ley said he would not seek re-elec­tion in the next gen­er­al elec­tion. His state­ment has caused wide­spread spec­u­la­tion as to who will be the next leader of the PNM.