Ira Math­ur

In first of a two-part ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, ad­dress­es a wide range of is­sues in­clud­ing the spread of COVID-19, the award of state con­tracts to re­put­ed gang lead­ers and how he plans to deal with the hate speech and racial strife that sur­faced dur­ing the re­cent gen­er­al elec­tion.

Q: Prime Min­is­ter, con­grat­u­la­tions on your re-elec­tion. Do you agree the re­cent elec­tion re­sult (22-19) demon­strat­ed yet again, the sharp and al­most equal racial di­vide be­tween In­do and African T&T cit­i­zens? How will you bring peo­ple who feel dis­en­fran­chised to the cen­tre?

A: I don’t ac­cept it, I don’t be­lieve it, don’t buy it. With­out apol­o­gy, I chal­lenge the per­cep­tion of racial pol­i­tics.

Yes, in this elec­tion race came to fore, but a race has not been dis­en­fran­chised. We had free and fair elec­tions. We’ve had close elec­tions be­fore (18-18, 17-17-2) Peo­ple are free to vote for who they want.

Pol­i­tics is about in­ter­est. Many fac­tors go in­to vic­to­ry and de­feat. Race is one of the many dif­fer­ences in our coun­try. Re­li­gion is an­oth­er, ge­og­ra­phy an­oth­er, so­cial stand­ing an­oth­er, class an­oth­er and how these dif­fer­ences play out in the po­lit­i­cal are­na de­pends on how peo­ple en­cour­age oth­ers to be­have.

Race loomed large in this elec­tion be­cause the UNC de­cid­ed to run a cam­paign based on race which they have done for years and in­ten­si­fied in the run-up to the elec­tion. They chose to fo­cus on­ly on racial is­sues and came up with One Cor­ri­dor, some­thing no pseu­do-in­tel­lec­tu­al com­men­ta­tor ex­plained to the pop­u­la­tion. It meant fo­cussing on dis­grun­tled black peo­ple who are not get­ting what they think they should get.

The ac­tu­al cam­paign went as far as to por­tray the fu­ture of un­for­tu­nate peo­ple hav­ing to eat grass if re­sults came out a cer­tain way. This is not what it was. What was One Cor­ri­dor? ‘Look at your con­di­tion. You need a couch, stove and fridge. Your gov­ern­ment is not do­ing for that, and it was a black gov­ern­ment.’

Eat­ing grass was used as a sym­bol of cir­cum­stance. I have met peo­ple who were paid to stay home, not to vote. Had they suc­ceed­ed in the cam­paign they struc­tured and car­ried out they would have formed the gov­ern­ment to­day. But they failed so the ef­fort is to be analysed and every­one is talk­ing race. They ran it sole­ly on racial su­pe­ri­or­i­ty or in­fe­ri­or­i­ty arrange­ments which they ad­vanced. Those who ran the UNC ran a racial cam­paign that back­fired.

Do you de­ny that we have had trib­al pol­i­tics all along, since the first elec­tion of Dr Er­ic Williams?

We have al­ways been di­vid­ed be­cause peo­ple are dif­fer­ent. Pol­i­tics is about in­ter­est, and di­vi­sion is about in­ter­est.

Take To­ba­go. For 20 years the PNM couldn’t win an elec­tion in To­ba­go. The To­bag­o­ni­ans felt their in­ter­ests were bet­ter served un­der ANR Robin­son and PNM couldn’t win the seats. I was liv­ing in Trinidad and when I ran for an elec­tion in To­ba­go, you know they told me? ‘You from here, but you’ve been away too long.’

Race was not the is­sue, but PNM couldn’t win the seats. We all came from some­where. Lead­er­ship goes way be­yond the PM or pub­lic fig­ures. Who­ev­er you are, wher­ev­er, what­ev­er you do, be it in busi­ness, sport, re­li­gion, acad­e­mia, dis­play lead­er­ship.

Be­fore COVID, I per­son­al­ly want­ed to reach out to re­spect­ed lead­ers in all com­mu­ni­ties to call on them to choose their bet­ter selves in re­lat­ing to peo­ple in their com­mu­ni­ties by demon­strat­ing tol­er­ance and re­spect. I do so now.

Doesn’t blame and racial mud­sling­ing go both ways? We are not shar­ing the blame for a cam­paign like that. We in the PNM didn’t car­ry out a cam­paign like that. Our par­ty is wide open. We had peo­ple from all races, all re­li­gions, all back­grounds, so we are not ac­cept­ing that the elec­tions were based on race. The PNM is a ral­ly for all, cut­ting across race, colour, creed and class. To­day, I am the PM of all cit­i­zens, and serve all cit­i­zens, to the shock of those who ran a racial cam­paign.

Af­ter this pre­vi­ous elec­tion, where racial words were thrown be­tween par­ties, peo­ple have been call­ing for laws against hate speech. This re­cent ex­pe­ri­ence shows us leg­is­la­tion may be re­quired. I will be speak­ing to the AG to ex­am­ine mis­be­hav­iour along racial or oth­er lines to en­act leg­is­la­tion, de­ter­mine leg­isla­tive pa­ra­me­ters. If we need to, we will en­sure peo­ple who act to the detri­ment of the coun­try are held ac­count­able by law.

Now tech­nol­o­gy makes it pos­si­ble to use so­cial me­dia anony­mous­ly or open­ly use hate speech to dam­age so­ci­ety. Hate speech or use of pub­li­ca­tions to dis­turb the na­tion­al ethos may have to be con­trolled by laws.

From T&T top­ping the charts for COVID-19 per­for­mance, we now have com­mu­ni­ty spread cross­ing 2000 and grow­ing with over 30 dead. How did we fail? Bor­der con­trol? Elec­tions? Lack of test­ing?

We were not recog­nised for be­ing im­mune to the virus but for our de­ci­sive ac­tion and pre­pared­ness and cre­at­ing and op­er­at­ing an ex­cel­lent par­al­lel health sys­tem to look af­ter in­fect­ed cit­i­zens. COVID-19 glob­al­ly has a course to run. Ini­tial­ly, we locked the coun­try down, to re­duce its trans­mis­sion but couldn’t stay that way for­ev­er. We have an econ­o­my to run, peo­ple must earn and live, so we came back out cau­tious­ly with some re­stric­tions in place. Once we be­gan to mix, went back to some nor­mal­cy, as ex­pect­ed, peo­ple were ex­posed, and there was a surge.

Are our health sys­tems ad­e­quate? Cas­es are grow­ing ex­po­nen­tial­ly. Peo­ple are dy­ing. Do we have suf­fi­cient beds, ven­ti­la­tors, med­ical staff? Has enough been done?

Enough in re­la­tion to what? We are try­ing to sup­press the ex­plo­sion of the virus in the pop­u­la­tion be­cause if it ex­plodes here. Noth­ing will be enough. We can’t have enough hos­pi­tal beds or doc­tors if every per­son vul­ner­a­ble to the virus in the coun­try is sick at the same time.

The vol­ume of sick peo­ple as against our abil­i­ty to treat them gov­erns suc­cess or fail­ure. Fail­ure in deal­ing with COVID-19 is mea­sured by whether it has over­come your health care sys­tem.

Con­tin­ues on page 7

Cur­rent­ly, our health sys­tem is cop­ing. Most peo­ple who are af­fect­ed don’t re­quire hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion or in­ten­sive care, but if they in­fect the el­der­ly or those with un­der­ly­ing dis­eases, our health sys­tem will be over­come. That is why we keep tak­ing ac­tion, to slow the spread of the virus to pre­vent it from spread­ing whether we make mask-wear­ing manda­to­ry or ask peo­ple to stay home, (as with the pub­lic ser­vice to re­duce the num­ber of ex­posed peo­ple). That’s our na­tion­al ef­fort.

To­day in a dai­ly news­pa­per, there is a pho­to that makes non­sense of every­thing I have done—peo­ple con­gre­gat­ing like a J’Ou­vert band out­side a bank. You won­der if these peo­ple have heard what we are deal­ing with and do they care that they are ex­posed to a virus that cre­ates ill­ness and death?

Some cit­i­zens are com­plain­ing that the new mask laws and the risk of fines will most ad­verse­ly af­fect the most vul­ner­a­ble (ven­dors, con­struc­tion work­ers, dai­ly paid work­ers, etc.). What is the al­ter­na­tive?

It’s a sim­ple ask, to wash your hands, cough in your el­bow, wear masks, so­cial­ly dis­tance. Don’t touch your face, don’t con­gre­gate. The al­ter­na­tive is not to do it and, in a pan­dem­ic, get sick and die. That is the al­ter­na­tive.

Con­struc­tion work­ers, eg, welders, wear pro­tec­tive gear, so what is the sto­ry about ‘It’s sti­fling me.’ There is pro­vi­sion for those with health con­di­tions. They can get an ex­emp­tion, but for the av­er­age per­son, a mask will pro­tect you and oth­ers from a virus that could kill you.

Are fu­ture lock­downs in­evitable? If the virus is ram­pant and the health ser­vice gets over­whelmed the on­ly way to re­duce the ex­po­sure of the pop­u­la­tion to in­fect­ed peo­ple is with a lock­down. We must avoid that as lock­downs are dis­as­trous, lead­ing to a loss of jobs, clo­sure of com­pa­nies and pover­ty. The Trea­sury doesn’t have the mon­ey to car­ry that.

All of that is the knock-on ef­fects from us not do­ing the sim­ple civic ask of fight­ing the virus by wear­ing a mask or fol­low­ing the hy­giene pro­to­cols.

Some peo­ple are de­fi­ant. They say the gov­ern­ment is bul­ly­ing. Well, to good pur­pose. To pre­vent the virus from go­ing in­to your ori­fices, save your life, and liveli­hood. We are fight­ing a pan­dem­ic, for God’s sake!

What about the bor­ders, and the na­tion­als who want to come home? Will you keep bor­ders closed till we get a vac­cine?

The bor­ders will re­main closed while we un­der­stand who moves from where to where. We couldn’t elim­i­nate the virus – you will see groups came in, test­ed pos­i­tive and we man­aged their care, but the virus even­tu­al­ly got in­to our coun­try. Now we’ve moved from iso­la­tion to clus­ters to com­mu­ni­ty spread we must com­pare that to the out­side world.

If the risks are pret­ty much the same, then we can be­gin to think of open­ing grad­u­al­ly. Health sys­tems in places like New York, Italy, and the UK with the trag­ic im­ages of thou­sands ill and dead, were over­come. If some peo­ple flout rules and con­gre­gate and spread the virus, and health sys­tems are over­whelmed, the out­come will be calami­tous for all cit­i­zens.

You vowed to ex­pose UNC cor­rup­tion six years back. Has that hap­pened?

Sev­er­al peo­ple in the UNC whose con­duct when they were in gov­ern­ment is now at­tract­ing the at­ten­tion of the po­lice have still end­ed up in Par­lia­ment to serve. Just be­fore this elec­tion, a judge read out three hours of judg­ment against a for­mer UNC min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment in the largest fraud case in the his­to­ry of T&T. De­spite this, he re­turned to the polls and Par­lia­ment with­out los­ing a sin­gle vote. No­body cared. The op­po­si­tion could have been gov­ern­ment.

If cit­i­zens ac­tive­ly vote for peo­ple whose con­duct is of in­ter­est to the po­lice, they turn gov­er­nance in­to a fools’ par­adise. You can­not be fish and fowl at the same time, you’re ei­ther wear­ing feath­ers or scales. Can we ex­pect ar­rests? The ad­vanc­ing of crim­i­nal in­dict­ments is a mat­ter for the DPP, and charg­ing is a mat­ter for the po­lice and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Sev­er­al mem­bers of the UNC Cab­i­net of 2010-2015 have is­sues which have at­tract­ed the in­ter­est of the po­lice and are al­ready be­fore court. There are spe­cif­ic in­stances where large sums of mon­ey were mis­han­dled and there is ev­i­dence of it and that too is at­tract­ing the at­ten­tion of the po­lice.

What the gov­ern­ment can do is find the ev­i­dence and give it to the au­thor­i­ties who are pur­su­ing the mat­ter and how it pro­gress­es is out­side the gov­ern­ment’s con­trol.

Are you say­ing your gov­ern­ment is squeaky clean, ac­count­able and trans­par­ent?

I don’t want you to say my gov­ern­ment is squeaky clean as there could be some­one in gov­ern­ment who has dirty hands, and I haven’t found out yet but yes, there is ac­count­abil­i­ty in the sys­tem now there was not there be­fore. We frown up­on the be­hav­iour that had be­come the norm be­fore we came in­to of­fice and con­duct­ed our­selves with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and in­tegri­ty.

Peo­ple say gov­ern­ments are all the same, yet my Cab­i­net has not been used as a mech­a­nism to mis­han­dle the Trea­sury nor func­tioned as if we came in­to of­fice to en­rich its mem­bers.

Dur­ing 2015-2020, there were no min­is­te­r­i­al ac­tions that I am aware of where there was con­duct con­cern­ing the han­dling of pub­lic as­sets for the ben­e­fit of the min­is­ter. The Op­po­si­tion made a moun­tain of how the AG and his fam­i­ly got state rentals as though that’s cor­rup­tion. That’s just fool­ish­ness. The gov­ern­ment has been rent­ing pri­vate build­ings in this coun­try for years. And you don’t think there’s a con­flict of in­ter­est be­tween the AG and his fam­i­ly rental? My gov­ern­ment has re­duced the num­ber of pri­vate­ly rent­ed build­ings, and be­gun to oc­cu­py the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus that was lan­guish­ing.

A gov­ern­ment de­part­ment deals with rentals. The AG de­clared his and his fam­i­ly in­ter­est and did not take part in the de­ci­sions. In the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, it does not say that you can­not have a con­flict. It says if you have a con­flict, you must iden­ti­fy and with­draw from it.

Min­is­ters re­cused them­selves 90 odd times. Re­cused is not cor­rup­tion. The sys­tem is work­ing. Sup­pose they had stayed there and con­duct­ed busi­ness with­out let­ting the pub­lic or their Cab­i­net col­leagues know? That would be cor­rupt. If you iden­ti­fy it as a con­flict and not par­tic­i­pate, that’s cor­rect.

While I have been Prime Min­is­ter, no con­trac­tor came to me at my res­i­dence to dis­cuss any con­tract. No pub­lic of­fi­cer could tell you I told them to give any­one a con­tract, and that’s the dif­fer­ence.

Let’s talk crime. Un­til re­cent­ly, the mur­der rate in TT hov­ered around 500 peo­ple a year. The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has re­peat­ed­ly com­plained that gang war­fare has been dri­ven by com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers who fund crime with state con­tracts.

We do have a prob­lem of com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers us­ing their po­si­tion to cor­ral gov­ern­ment con­tracts and dis­trib­ute drugs, arms, women. The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice alone can’t do it. We must find a way to en­sure we don’t en­cour­age the gang cul­ture by al­low­ing per­sons who have a his­to­ry of crim­i­nal con­duct to be ben­e­fi­cia­ries of largesse pro­vid­ed as a safe­ty net for the most vul­ner­a­ble and in need in com­mu­ni­ties.

The word is if you with­draw con­tracts, gang lead­ers black­mail the State, threat­en to make trou­ble, shoot up the place.

There is some el­e­ment of truth to it. Every­thing we do has a plus, and a neg­a­tive and the re­sponse must pro­tect the State. When we de­ny op­por­tu­ni­ties to cer­tain peo­ple with­out be­ing able to sub­stan­ti­ate it in law, it is a dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tion.

It’s a broad­er prob­lem than say­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice vets con­tracts. If they are gang lead­ers, then why aren’t the laws on gangs not be­ing ap­plied? If you call some­one a gang leader with­out be­ing able to ver­i­fy it and de­ny them a con­tract on that ba­sis, it’s a crime and the State is li­able.

If you are a gang leader, there are laws to deal with gang lead­ers. Gang lead­ers are not ashamed to pur­sue their rights when you take ac­tion; you must pro­tect the State. By us­ing cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion, we are try­ing to pre­vent ca­reer crim­i­nals from get­ting state con­tracts.

TO­MOR­ROW: Dr Row­ley on the sale of Petrotrin, the Venezue­lan refugee sit­u­a­tion, man­ag­ing a pan­dem­ic econ­o­my and the sur­vival of T&T in an un­cer­tain fu­ture.