Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley seemed un­both­ered by the bud­ding con­flict be­tween US Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go Joseph Mon­del­lo and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day.

Even as de­bate on whether Young should ei­ther be fired or re­sign over the furore caused by Mon­del­lo’s claim that he dis­cussed T&T break­ing the Rio Treaty over Venezuela Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez’s vis­it to T&T in March, Row­ley re­mained silent on the mat­ter.

The Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day did not re­spond to nu­mer­ous calls and texts about the tense me­dia re­leas­es be­tween Mon­del­lo and Young on Wednes­day.

How­ev­er, he in­stead post­ed ca­su­al pic­tures to his Face­book page from his kitchen gar­den, pos­ing with heads of let­tuce and oth­er green­ery.

The sev­en pic­tures, post­ed just af­ter 3.30 pm yes­ter­day, showed a smil­ing Prime Min­is­ter, ca­su­al­ly dressed in a flow­ered shirt and kha­ki pants, har­vest­ing heads of let­tuce and tend­ing to oth­er small plants.

The cap­tion on the pic­tures sim­ple stat­ed, “Tend­ing to this gar­den pro­vides a great sense of sat­is­fac­tion.”

Row­ley ap­peared to pose for the pic­tures, one star­ing off in­to the dis­tance, an­oth­er smil­ing over a bas­ket of the har­vest­ed food­stuff.

“I come here when I have a lit­tle time, some­times late in the evening or very ear­ly in the morn­ing. I do a lot of fo­cused think­ing when I am till­ing the soil and while I am plant­i­ng,” Row­ley wrote in a cap­tion ac­com­pa­ny­ing the pic­tures.

“Since com­ing in­to of­fice, I’ve cre­at­ed and kept a kitchen gar­den at the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in St Ann’s.”

The brew­ing trou­ble be­tween Mon­del­lo and Young seemed far from Row­ley’s mind in the pic­tures. With­in the hour, the pic­tures al­so gar­nered thou­sands of re­ac­tions and hun­dreds of com­ments.

On Tues­day, Mon­del­lo broke pro­to­col and is­sued a me­dia state­ment con­firm­ing he did raise the is­sue of T&T break­ing the Rio Treaty when Ro­driguez was al­lowed in­to the coun­try on March 27.

At a Sen­ate sit­ting last Wednes­day (May 13), how­ev­er, Young said he spoke with Mon­del­lo and the is­sue of the Rio Treaty did not come up.

But af­ter Mon­del­lo’s state­ment, Young re­spond­ed via me­dia re­lease say­ing that his Sen­ate state­ments were mis­con­strued and he ac­tu­al­ly said that a breach of the treaty was not raised.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to reach Row­ley yes­ter­day for his re­sponse to the Mon­del­lo/Young sit­u­a­tion but there was no re­sponse.

There was al­so no re­sponse to ques­tions which we put to the PM about calls from the Op­po­si­tion for both him and Young to step down.

On May 11, Young said he had sight of the con­tract of sale be­tween Paria Fu­el Trad­ing and Aru­ba and that there was a clause pre­vent­ing the sale of fu­el to a sanc­tioned coun­try.

But Paria, in a full page ad­ver­tise­ment on Mon­day, said it pro­duced that con­tract with the clause for­bid­ding the sale of fu­el to sanc­tioned coun­tries, on­ly af­ter the fu­el was pur­chased and the ship, the Al­dan, had al­ready left T&T and was re­port­ed­ly in Aru­ba.

Paria al­so stat­ed that the buy­er, ES Eu­ro Ship­ping SA, was pro­vid­ed with a redact­ed sales con­tract with the lo­cal buy­er in Aru­ba with the sanc­tions clause.

How­ev­er, the Aruban gov­ern­ment, through its T&T Em­bassy, has made it clear that on­ly the gov­ern­ment is al­lowed to pur­chase fu­el for that coun­try and it had not done any busi­ness with Paria this year.

It al­so added that the Re­fin­ery of Aru­ba has been in­ac­tive since 2011 and the Aru­ba gov­ern­ment now pur­chas­es its fu­el from the US Gulf Coast.

Guardian Me­dia al­so asked Young about the con­tract that he claimed to have seen be­tween Paria and Aru­ba for the sale of fu­el, in light of the fact that the Aruban gov­ern­ment said they did not pur­chase any fu­el from Paria. He did not re­spond.

That si­lence by the Gov­ern­ment was em­u­lat­ed by State-owned Paria Fu­el Trad­ing.

Paria chair­man New­man George did not re­spond to calls or ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact George, Paria gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed and the com­pa­ny’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion spe­cial­ist Ner­is­sa Fever­ck. No one re­spond­ed to calls or texts yes­ter­day.

Ques­tions to Paria came af­ter the King­dom of the Nether­lands con­firmed on Tues­day that on­ly the Aruban gov­ern­ment has the au­ton­o­my to pur­chase fu­el for the coun­try. That means ES Eu­ro Ship­ping SA could not have pur­chased the Paria fu­el for use by the Aruban gov­ern­ment.

Com­ing out of the state­ment from the Nether­lands Em­bassy, Paria Fu­el was asked about who was the lo­cal buy­er in Aru­ba if the 150,000 bar­rels of fu­el which ES Eu­ro Ship­ping SA bought was not for the Aru­ba gov­ern­ment.