Rose­marie Sant

A Cab­i­net reshuf­fle, health is­sues af­fect­ing two min­is­ters, an ap­par­ent diplo­mat­ic snub and leg­isla­tive stand-offs were among the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments for 2017.

Dur­ing the year two gov­ern­ment min­is­ters fell ill—one is back on the job, while the oth­er re­mains hos­pi­talised abroad.

As 2016 gave way to 2017, there was the news that En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan had fall­en ill while on va­ca­tion and would have heart surgery. Khan un­der­went triple by-pass surgery on Jan­u­ary 8 and Khan and re­mained off the job for more than three months un­til ear­ly April.

In Sep­tem­ber, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie suf­fered a stroke and was ad­mit­ted to the in­ten­sive care unit at the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain.

Cuffie, who is al­so the La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro MP, was even­tu­al­ly trans­ferred to a med­ical in­sti­tu­tion in Wash­ing­ton DC in the Unit­ed States for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion where he re­mains. Rel­a­tives said his con­di­tion has im­proved sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

In oth­er health-re­lat­ed de­vel­op­ments, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­turned to a med­ical cen­tre in Cal­i­for­nia, Unit­ed States, for a med­ical check-up which was a fol­low up to a vis­it made in Au­gust 2016 when he was giv­en a “good re­port” by doc­tors.

One of the po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies of the year be­gan in late June when Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, who had been fired from the Cab­i­net by Row­ley in March 2016, was sworn-in as the new Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties. She was giv­en the port­fo­lio af­ter Row­ley ad­vised Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona to re­voke the ap­point­ment of Fitzger­ald Hinds who was re­as­signed as Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs.

How­ev­er, Mc­Don­ald’s re­turn was short-lived. Three days af­ter she took the min­is­te­r­i­al oath, Pres­i­dent Car­mona was ad­vised to re­voke her ap­point­ment “with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.” It had to do with one of her guests at the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent’s House, Cedric “Burkie” Burke.

It lat­er emerged that the well-known Sea Lots res­i­dent, who was de­tained dur­ing the 2011 state of emer­gency and charged with be­ing a gang leader, had been one of two last-minute in­vi­tees to the func­tion. Sources at Pres­i­dent’s House con­firmed that Mc­Don­ald asked for two ex­tra in­vi­ta­tions to the cer­e­mo­ny but didn’t give names. When Burke ar­rived he was made to wait un­til Mc­Don­ald’s ar­rival when he was ush­ered up­stairs with oth­er guests.

Row­ley sub­se­quent­ly called Mc­Don­ald to a meet­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre where she was in­formed that her min­is­te­r­i­al ap­point­ment was be­ing re­voked. Mc­Don­ald re­mains on the back bench in Par­lia­ment but re­mains ac­tive with­in the rul­ing PNM.

Row­ley held the pub­lic util­i­ties port­fo­lio for more than a month be­fore ap­point­ing banker Robert Le Hunte. He took the oath on Au­gust 24 but his ap­point­ment was briefly re­voked when it was dis­cov­ered that he had dual cit­i­zen­ship in Ghana. Late on In­de­pen­dence Day Le Hunte took the oath again.

Diplo­mat­ic ad­vances
and fall­outs

New­ly-in­stalled Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump called Row­ley on Feb­ru­ary 19 to dis­cuss what the White House said was “co-op­er­a­tion on shared pri­or­i­ties.” A brief para­graph on the White House web­site said the two lead­ers “reaf­firmed the strong se­cu­ri­ty part­ner­ship and agreed to con­tin­ue close co-or­di­na­tion in the fight against ter­ror­ism and transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.

Pres­i­dent Trump in­vit­ed Row­ley to vis­it Wash­ing­ton, DC. How­ev­er, that vis­it had not ma­te­ri­alised by year end.

An­oth­er vis­it that failed to take place fol­lowed an an­nounce­ment in ear­ly No­vem­ber by Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young that Row­ley had been in­vit­ed to Chi­na to at­tend a Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Chi­na with World Po­lit­i­cal Par­ties High-Lev­el Meet­ing.

A week lat­er came word that the in­vi­ta­tion to the high-lev­el meet­ing was be­ing re­placed with an of­fi­cial vis­it to Chi­na in 2018. This prompt­ed the coun­try’s longest-serv­ing diplo­mat, re­tired head of the pub­lic ser­vice Regi­nald Du­mas, to re­mark that it was “high­ly un­usu­al” for Chi­na to with­draw an in­vi­ta­tion to a for­eign leader.

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Du­mas said: “Is it that there was no in­vi­ta­tion? Is it that some­thing was be­ing con­sid­ered? I don’t know, we will prob­a­bly nev­er get to the truth of the mat­ter be­cause the Chi­nese aren’t go­ing to say any­thing, of course. But it is high­ly un­usu­al and it does rep­re­sent on the face of it a snub.”

Ques­tions were al­so raised by for­mer Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Mar­i­ano Browne who al­so felt it was a diplo­mat­ic snub.

The is­sue erupt­ed in­to a war of words with Young lash­ing out at Du­mas and Browne say­ing they should not com­ment on mat­ters about which they do not have all the facts.

Al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly came the an­nounce­ment that PNM ac­tivist Make­da An­toine was be­ing ap­point­ed to the top diplo­mat­ic post of Am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed Na­tions in Gene­va, Switzer­land.

Du­mas crit­i­cised the ap­point­ment say­ing he did not be­lieve An­toine had the ex­pe­ri­ence to head such an im­por­tant mis­sion.

Leg­isla­tive spar­ring in the House

On the leg­isla­tive front, Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion trad­ed words over the For­eign Ac­counts Tax Com­pli­ance Act (Fat­ca), a mat­ter which had been on the agen­da from late 2016. The bank­ing sec­tor plead­ed with Par­lia­ment to pass the leg­is­la­tion.

The leg­is­la­tion en­ables lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to re­port to the US In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice (IRS) on ac­counts held by US clients via the Board of In­land Rev­enue and is part of US tax eva­sion law.

The is­sue came in­to the spot­light af­ter the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BATT) and oth­er groups be­gan warn­ing of pos­si­ble neg­a­tive con­se­quences for the coun­try if the leg­is­la­tion wasn’t passed with­in a spec­i­fied time frame. Sig­nals from the Op­po­si­tion that it was not pre­pared to sup­port the Bill, which re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty, added to weeks of ten­sion, char­ac­terised by dire warn­ings of loss­es and eco­nom­ic fall out if T&T failed to be­come Fat­ca com­plaint.

Even­tu­al­ly, af­ter much po­lit­i­cal spar­ring, the leg­is­la­tion was passed unan­i­mous­ly in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Feb­ru­ary 23, with all 39 MPs present on that day vot­ing in favour of the amend­ed Bill. It was al­so passed in the Sen­ate with 29 in favour, none against and one ab­sten­tion.

The sec­ond leg­isla­tive stand-off oc­curred late in the year when At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris al-Rawi tabled the An­ti Gang Bill in Par­lia­ment.

In an­nounc­ing plans to de­bate the Bill, the AG quot­ed fig­ures from the Or­gan­ised Crime In­tel­li­gence Unit (OCIU) which showed there were close to 2,459 sus­pect­ed gang mem­bers across the coun­try. How­ev­er, the Op­po­si­tion re­fused to sup­port the mea­sure and when a vote was tak­en on De­cem­ber 7, the Bill failed to get the re­quired three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar blamed the de­feat of the Bill on Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, claim­ing it was due to his re­sis­tance to their rec­om­men­da­tions on a sun­set clause. The leg­is­la­tion can­not re­turn to Par­lia­ment for six months.

Of emails and Email­gate

To­ward the end of the year, a state­ment by act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams that Email­gate al­le­ga­tions raised years ear­li­er had been found to be of “very lit­tle of sub­stance,” led to calls by the Op­po­si­tion for Row­ley’s res­ig­na­tion.

An­oth­er con­tro­ver­sy that was still brew­ing at year’s end had to do with a threat of le­gal ac­tion over al­le­ga­tions by Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. Mooni­lal read in­to Hansard an email link­ing pay­ments of the $80 mil­lion in­volved in the so-called fake oil scan­dal at Petrotrin in­volv­ing A&V Drilling to “the spouse of a high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial.”

As he read the con­tents of the email with de­tails of a for­eign bank ac­count, the AG in­ter­vened de­clar­ing that Mooni­lal had made a “di­rect in­dict­ment on the Prime Min­is­ter.”

Mooni­lal re­luc­tant­ly with­drew the state­ment.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley has since in­struct­ed his at­tor­neys to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion against per­sons who had pub­lished the “false and ma­li­cious” state­ments made in the Par­lia­ment by Mooni­lal.