Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was right when she said re­cent in­stances of van­dal­ism and des­e­cra­tion at Hin­du tem­ples were ei­ther crim­i­nals look­ing for an op­por­tu­ni­ty or a soft tar­get, or peo­ple who are men­tal­ly dis­turbed or even drug ad­dicts.

“And I think that’s what it is,” Row­ley added at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at White­hall.

Row­ley said it was not very of­ten that he agreed with the Op­po­si­tion Leader but on this oc­ca­sion, he could not take is­sue with what she said.

“Be­cause what she said is ba­si­cal­ly the facts as far as I’m con­cerned,” he said.

He added she was quite cor­rect in say­ing that peo­ple should not take those in­stances and say it is an at­tack against Hin­dus. He not­ed oth­er re­li­gions have had crim­i­nals en­ter their places of wor­ship. He not­ed that Fr Clyde Har­vey, in St Joseph, was ac­cost­ed by two crim­i­nals and was al­most phys­i­cal­ly harmed and peo­ple have al­so in­ter­fered with mosques and Chris­t­ian places were af­fect­ed al­so.

Row­ley said he’d dis­cour­age peo­ple who would want to use the in­stances of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty against places of wor­ship to por­tray that as the state of play in T&T. Row­ley said he couldn’t say that peo­ple were tar­get­ed due to their re­li­gion, since he didn’t live like that.

“I’m a Methodist by bap­tism, I was raised by Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tists, went to an An­gli­can school, mar­ried a Catholic and I’m man­ag­ing Hin­dus and Mus­lims at work ... I can­not sub­scribe to one group at­tack­ing an­oth­er be­cause of their re­li­gion.

“But we have pet­ty crim­i­nals car­ry­ing out crim­i­nal con­duct at places of wor­ship and that must stop. The po­lice must make every ef­fort to find out who is do­ing that and stop it and it must not be used to la­bel and stain our coun­try,” Row­ley added.

AG will con­vene an­ti-crime talks

Mean­while, Row­ley said arrange­ments have been put in place for the an­ti-crime talks with the Op­po­si­tion. He said the is­sue, as far as he’s con­cerned, is that Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans have not been able to agree on a leg­isla­tive agen­da.

“The Op­po­si­tion goes out of its way to not sup­port Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion as they be­lieve if crime is ram­pant it’s good for the pol­i­tics.”

Row­ley said he has iden­ti­fied the Gov­ern­ment’s four mem­bers who will meet the Op­po­si­tion’s four-man team and al­so sug­gest­ed that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al be the con­venor of the two groups. He said he saw ob­jec­tions to the AG—but he said he doesn’t have time to play games with the Op­po­si­tion. He asked who they want­ed to chair it and if it should be them.

On calls for wider in­put, he said this is a mat­ter for par­lia­men­tar­i­ans though they could still have ad­vis­ers, “So, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al will at­tempt to con­vene.”

He said the ba­sic is­sue is find­ing com­mon ground on leg­is­la­tion.

“So, I hope that the peo­ple will meet, I don’t have to be there, I put four Cab­i­net mem­bers to be there be­cause the is­sues are not is­sues be­cause I am there,” he said, dis­miss­ing crit­i­cism of his ab­sence from the meet­ing.