Renu­ka Singh

T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce CEO Gabriel Faria yes­ter­day apol­o­gised to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley over com­ments he (Faria) made against the Gov­ern­ment on a pri­vate chat which was even­tu­al­ly shared with Row­ley.

On Wednes­day, Row­ley took to his Face­book page where he blast­ed Faria, say­ing he was us­ing his po­si­tion to in­flu­ence vot­ers with his “shal­low dis­mis­sive­ness.” At the time, it was un­clear what prompt­ed Row­ley’s at­tack on Faria, as there was no in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main about any harsh com­ment which Faria which may have prompt­ed such scathing at­tack by the PM.

One se­nior PNM mem­ber had, how­ev­er, sug­gest­ed to Guardian Me­dia that an in­ter­view Faria did on state-owned TTT, in which he crit­i­cised as­pects of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s Mid-year Re­view, may have been the of­fend­ing is­sue.

Late yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Faria is­sued a state­ment as a “pri­vate cit­i­zen” apol­o­gis­ing to the PM and con­firm­ing that a pri­vate What­sApp chat in which he shared his views in “my pri­vate ca­pac­i­ty as a cit­i­zen of our Re­pub­lic” was the of­fend­ing in­ci­dent.

Faria al­so shared the pri­vate mes­sage that of­fend­ed the Prime Min­is­ter:

“I think you are mak­ing as­sump­tions about the re­spon­si­ble and eth­i­cal be­hav­iour of politi­cians. I think that train has left the sta­tion. Their (sic) is no in­ter­est in be­ing re­spon­si­ble or eth­i­cal or treat­ing ei­ther the cit­i­zens or busi­ness­es with re­spect or fair­ly. Their (sic) is one in­ter­est: win the elec­tions at all costs so the par­ty in pow­er can con­tin­ue to life (sic) high off the backs of hon­est tax pay­ing (sic) cit­i­zens. I am dis­gust­ed with the be­hav­iour/dis­dain/ap­a­thy dis­placed by both par­ties.”

Faria al­so of­fered an “un­re­served apol­o­gy” for his state­ments but did not di­rect the apol­o­gy to any­one in par­tic­u­lar.

“I wish to un­re­served­ly apol­o­gise for the tone and for the in­tem­per­ate com­ments about the state of play of our pol­i­tics. It is clear that the lan­guage is in­ap­pro­pri­ate and this I very much re­gret. Even though these com­ments were made in pri­vate, I ac­cept that I should still have been mind­ful of my pub­lic and pro­fes­sion­al roles, and in par­tic­u­lar, my po­si­tion as CEO of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce,” he said.

Faria, how­ev­er, said he be­lieved busi­ness con­cerns were not be­ing prop­er­ly ad­dressed by the Gov­ern­ment.

“The sen­ti­ments I ex­pressed were un­der­pinned by a grow­ing frus­tra­tion I felt as a key ad­vo­cate on be­half of busi­ness,” he said.

“This does not ex­cuse the tone or con­tent of what I said, but it is in­tend­ed to pro­vide the con­text for my ac­tions.

“It was not my in­ten­tion to dis­re­spect those who hold high of­fice nor to bring dis­re­pute to the TT Cham­ber. It fell short of the pro­fes­sion­al con­duct that would be ex­pect­ed by the TTCIC and the board.”

He al­so said the cham­ber’s board has asked to meet to de­cide the way for­ward.

Guardian Me­dia learned that the cham­ber ex­ec­u­tive were locked in lengthy meet­ings yes­ter­day af­ter Faria ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion.

How­ev­er, Faria’s res­ig­na­tion was not im­me­di­ate­ly ac­cept­ed by the cham­ber and Guardian Me­dia was told the ex­ec­u­tives asked that he “hold his hand” and com­mit to an ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing and board meet­ing be­fore mak­ing a fi­nal de­ci­sion.

Two oth­er cha­t­room par­tic­i­pants yes­ter­day spoke to Guardian Me­dia un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty and said they did not know who shared the pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter.

“The cha­t­room is gov­erned by Chatham House rules, it is a safe space and what is said there re­mains there. We do not know who vi­o­lat­ed that but it is up­set­ting,” one of the chat group mem­bers said.

Busi­ness cham­bers back un­der fire CEO

Free­dom of speech and ex­pres­sion are both un­der se­ri­ous threat once a sit­ting Prime Min­is­ter can pub­licly at­tack a busi­ness leader cham­pi­oning the cause of his mem­bers.

This was the view of head of the To­ba­go chap­ter of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Di­ane Hadad, to a so­cial me­dia at­tack by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on the cham­ber’s CEO Gabriel Faria.

“The role of the head of any NGO (non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion) is to rep­re­sent its mem­bers. And to take a per­son­al at­tack on any­body car­ry­ing such a role or speak­ing on be­half of their mem­ber­ship is start­ing to step in­to the bound­aries of tak­ing away our free­dom of speech and free­dom of opin­ions and there­fore that could nev­er be safe for any coun­try and the peo­ple of the coun­try,” Hadad told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

Hadad said in a democ­ra­cy, peo­ple’s voic­es need to be heard and she won­dered why Row­ley was try­ing pub­licly to shut Faria down.

“I think that in it­self is the mes­sage. That mes­sage would be the mes­sage of keep qui­et, the mes­sage of si­lence,” she said

San Juan Busi­ness Cham­ber head Vivek Char­ran al­so de­fend­ed Faria.

“Gabriel (Faria) is not a po­lit­i­cal fig­ure, he has nev­er been and has nev­er re­al­ly come out as a po­lit­i­cal fig­ure,” Char­ran said.

He said Faria was stand­ing up and stat­ing what the busi­ness­es are go­ing through.

“I do not know what Gabriel ac­tu­al­ly said but on the face of it, I could say that Gabriel has nev­er lied. He has not mis­rep­re­sent­ed the sit­u­a­tion to be some­thing oth­er than what it is,” Char­ran said.

Char­ran said all Faria “strived to do” was rep­re­sent the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty be­cause it has been placed in a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion due to the COVID-19 shut­down mea­sures.

“If it is that he has done some­thing wrong, then what should have been done was talk on the mat­ter of what he said, what was mis­lead­ing, what was wrong,” Char­ran said.

“When you at­tack his per­son­al­i­ty and his char­ac­ter, I do not un­der­stand that. I am strug­gling to un­der­stand why the Prime Min­is­ter, at this time, would get in­to that sort of pub­lic state­ment, when he came out of this COVID-19 thing look­ing so good.”

Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers co­or­di­na­tor Jai Lelad­hars­ingh al­so said while he did not know what prompt­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment, he agreed with Faria’s stance on VAT de­fer­ral and help­ing small and medi­um busi­ness­es.

“We need liq­uid­i­ty sup­port, we need some sup­port from the State and we need the cham­bers to come to­geth­er with ideas and we al­so need to meet with the Roadmap Com­mit­tee to dis­cuss re­cov­ery,” he said.

He said that in Cana­da, the gov­ern­ment gave grants to busi­ness­es.

“Grants is mon­ey you don’t have to pay back. The Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to put to­geth­er the loan guar­an­tee pro­gramme but it’s not on­line yet and busi­ness­es are shut­ting down,” Lelad­hars­ingh said.

Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Keiran Singh said he sup­port­ed Faria’s lob­by­ing for de­fer­ral of tax­es.

“Dis­pos­able in­comes of all T&T has been neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by coro­n­avirus,” Singh said.

He said de­spite the shut­downs, over­heads like elec­tric­i­ty were still due.

‘The oth­er util­i­ties are mi­nor but T&TEC and the com­mer­cial in­dus­tri­al rates, we would have hope to get some de­fer­ral in those rates too,” he said.