Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day launched a scathing at­tack on T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce CEO Gabriel Faria, say­ing he had a “dis­re­spect­ful mouth” and an “acid tongue.”

The Prime Min­is­ter made the com­ments on his Face­book page but did not say why he at­tacked Faria or what prompt­ed the post.

In the post, which amassed 336 re­ac­tions and 74 com­ments with­in two hours of post­ing, Row­ley blast­ed Faria for not of­fer­ing him­self for pub­lic of­fice “be­cause he is on­ly about him­self and what he can suck from the coun­try.”

But while dis­parag­ing Faria for not of­fer­ing him­self, Row­ley al­so said if Faria did of­fer him­self for pub­lic of­fice “he will be dis­missed with a swift kick in the pants.”

“As head of the Cham­ber of Com­merce Gabriel Faria can have no pri­vate view which he ex­press­es as the “known” head of the Cham­ber. He knows ex­act­ly what he is do­ing and it is him try­ing to in­flu­ence vot­ers with his dis­mis­sive shal­low­ness whilst be­ing very dis­re­spect­ful to the coun­try’s lead­er­ship,” Row­ley wrote.

While there are no pub­lic re­ports of Faria speak­ing out re­cent­ly about the se­lec­tion process or the coun­try’s lead­er­ship, Row­ley seemed to be re­fer­ring to some­thing spe­cif­ic.

“If he is so dis­dain­ful of all the peo­ple who of­fer them­selves for of­fice through all po­lit­i­cal par­ties and who the pop­u­la­tion se­lects freely and fair­ly, to run their af­fairs, then why doesn’t he give a few years of his bril­liance and per­fec­tion in ser­vice of the pub­lic in­ter­est,” the PM said.

Row­ley lashed even hard­er at Faria, say­ing the pop­u­la­tion “sees him for what he is.”

“A dis­re­spect­ful mouth with pre­cious lit­tle val­ue rat­tling around in the Cham­ber with his acid tongue,” Row­ley said.

Row­ley did not re­spond to calls or mes­sages yes­ter­day for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on what prompt­ed the post. He al­so de­clined calls to his mo­bile phone.

But even Faria was blind­sided by the com­ments when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day.

“I have no idea what it’s about,” Faria said in re­sponse to What­sApp ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on what may have prompt­ed Row­ley’s harsh words.

But while Faria was in the dark about the at­tack, one Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter point­ed Guardian Me­dia to an in­ter­view the Cham­ber CEO did on TTT on Mon­day morn­ing, in which Faria was crit­i­cal of Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert.

In that seg­ment, Faria spoke about the Mid-year Re­view and de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment’s pos­i­tive post-COVID-19 out­look as “un­re­al­is­tic”.

Say­ing that the Gov­ern­ment owed sup­pli­ers over $5 bil­lion, Faria said, “I gave an es­ti­mate, I would love the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to val­i­date or say it’s wrong. I gave an es­ti­mate that the Gov­ern­ment owes sup­pli­ers over $5 bil­lion. If the Gov­ern­ment does not pay that $5 bil­lion, then it is quite pos­si­ble that he can man­age his ex­pens­es.” He added, “The Gov­ern­ment is ac­tu­al­ly try­ing to charge busi­ness tax­es based on last year’s in­come. Al­most every busi­ness is show­ing re­duced busi­ness.”

Faria said that by not pay­ing sup­pli­ers, over­stat­ing tax in­come and not pay­ing Val­ue Added Tax, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance could make his num­bers “hap­pen.”

“If you don’t pay sup­pli­ers and if you charge busi­ness­es tax on last year’s in­come and if you don’t pay the bal­ance of VAT re­funds, which by my es­ti­mate is $2.5 bil­lion, it is quite pos­si­ble to achieve the num­bers the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance says,” Faria said.

Faria al­so said tax­es should not be charged on this year’s earn­ings be­cause of the dis­rup­tion caused by COVID-19. He said it would be “ir­re­spon­si­ble” for the State to charge the com­pa­nies tax­es based on those fig­ures, adding the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has been “ig­nor­ing” the Cham­ber on that mat­ter.

“The Min­is­ter has the pow­er to make the num­bers he has put out hap­pen. We speak on be­half of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. Let’s put that out there and make sure we do the right thing,” Faria said.