DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

As the coun­try awaits an an­nounce­ment at the con­clu­sion of Cab­i­net’s work­ing re­treat this evening, po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors have sug­gest­ed that any re­as­sign­ment of port­fo­lios would not be mean­ing­ful.

In­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the agen­da for the re­treat was held close to Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials’ chests, ex­cept for dis­clos­ing that it would be held at The Crews Inn Ho­tel in Ch­aguara­mas in an email from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) on Sun­day.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the ho­tel and yacht­ing cen­tre yes­ter­day, there was lit­tle ac­tiv­i­ty as the restau­rant was locked down. The car park was main­ly emp­ty with the oc­ca­sion­al marked po­lice ve­hi­cles en­ter­ing and ex­it­ing the com­pound. On­ly guests were al­lowed in­to the ho­tel. The café re­mained open.

A peek in­to the day’s hap­pen­ings was shared on the OPM’s Face­book page. Ac­cord­ing to one of the snap­shots, yes­ter­day’s event be­gan with a pre­sen­ta­tion by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert, who is prepar­ing to de­liv­er bud­get 2023/2024 soon. The de­tails were not pro­vid­ed.

An­oth­er im­age showed a smil­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley hav­ing bev­er­ages with Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard and for­mer West In­dies spin­ner Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine dur­ing what was cap­tioned “a work­ing lunch”. The post said Dr Row­ley con­tin­ues to en­gage crick­et stake­hold­ers in his ca­pac­i­ty as chair­man of Cari­com’s Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al Sub-Com­mit­tee on Crick­et.

Al­though po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath de­clined to make pre­dic­tions on whether Dr Row­ley will keep min­is­ters in their re­spec­tive port­fo­lios, he said the re­treat is like­ly an im­por­tant one.

“The Gov­ern­ment is prepar­ing for a gen­er­al elec­tion, and this is prob­a­bly the first step in that re­gard,” he said.

“I mean, there’s on­ly so much that they could reshuf­fle from with­in their mem­bers on the Gov­ern­ment’s side. On­ly if they bring in a whole new batch of sen­a­tors and give them min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios,” he added, but ad­mit­ted that this was un­like­ly.

Sim­i­lar­ly, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Win­ford James said he would not spec­u­late on the Prime Min­is­ter’s plans. He al­so crit­i­cised Dr Row­ley for not be­ing more trans­par­ent with the pub­lic.

“Hav­ing to guess in the ab­sence of con­tent is re­al­ly quite dis­ap­point­ing and it just tells you how au­to­crat­ic the au­thor­i­tar­i­an na­ture of the pol­i­tics is in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Al­so lend­ing his voice to the con­ver­sa­tion was econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James who said a reshuf­fle was cos­met­ic and based on the dis­cre­tion of one man. He ques­tioned who would be polic­ing the mar­shal.

“When you’re talk­ing about reshuf­fling, that’s in the con­text of his (Dr Row­ley’s) in­ter­est in po­lit­i­cal sur­vival. But the biggest ques­tion of all is, who is eval­u­at­ing? When you’re do­ing the reshuf­fling, are they go­ing to reshuf­fle the prime min­is­ter?” he asked.

At the open­ing of the new par­lia­men­tary term on Mon­day, Dr Row­ley re­spond­ed to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tion on a po­ten­tial reshuf­fle with “Are you avail­able for an ap­point­ment?” be­fore he walked away.

Sev­er­al oth­er min­is­ters were asked whether they had any inkling that there could be a re­as­sign­ment of posts. Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said he was on­ly sure that he was the MP for Lopinot/ Bon Air West. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga said any in­for­ma­tion would be re­vealed via of­fi­cial chan­nels when tak­en. Youth De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings said Dr Row­ley would make any change he deemed fit.