Sto­ries by

Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has called on the chair­man of the task force in­ves­ti­gat­ing the state of chil­dren’s homes in 1997, Robert Sab­ga, to apol­o­gise to Trinidad and To­ba­go for “mis­rep­re­sent­ing the facts” and con­flat­ing the is­sue of abuse with the death of Akiel Cham­bers in 1998.

He has al­so called on Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to apol­o­gise and has said that the Op­po­si­tion has spread lies on this mat­ter for po­lit­i­cal gain.

“There are two cit­i­zens who have an apol­o­gy for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. One is Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader and the oth­er is Dr Robert Sab­ga. They should apol­o­gise to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said. 

This mat­ter of the treat­ment of those chil­dren, and worst the con­flat­ing of this mat­ter with the Akiel Cham­bers’ mys­tery, I find the be­hav­iour of some of these peo­ple quite rep­re­hen­si­ble,” Dr Row­ley added.

He ques­tioned how the 1997 re­port man­aged to treat with the 1998 killing of Akiel Cham­bers.

“How could the chair­man of the re­port of 1997 speak to the coun­ty as though his in­volve­ment in that re­port in­volved knowl­edge and ex­pec­ta­tion from a mur­der of a child that took place a year lat­er and worst as­crib­ing that to of­fi­cials of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty while ex­on­er­at­ing an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty?”

He added, “And then you have an Op­po­si­tion Leader go­ing on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form with video of this ob­scen­i­ty and pub­lish­ing that as the state of play in Trinidad and To­ba­go and has the gall to want to im­pli­cate the coun­try’s Prime Min­is­ter in some wrong­do­ing in this non­sense? What is wrong with you all?”

The Prime Min­is­ter con­demned al­le­ga­tions of a pae­dophile ring with­in the PNM, as al­leged by Sab­ga.

“I’m not in­ter­est­ed in any of your po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sion as Dr Sab­ga is im­ply­ing that if you are UNC you are ex­on­er­at­ed and of course, I know all of these things that was hap­pen­ing in some ring, crim­i­nal ring against chil­dren and you know and you now telling me that?”

Fur­ther ex­press­ing his views on the trans­gres­sion, the Prime Min­is­ter said: “A good case could be made for pub­lic flog­ging but I wouldn’t make it now.”

Dr Row­ley said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s apol­o­gy needs to come for pro­mot­ing Sab­ga’s ut­ter­ances. 

“What I find shock­ing is the use of un­var­nished lies in a sit­u­a­tion of na­tion­al hurt,” he said.

He slammed what he be­lieved to be the use of the sen­si­tive is­sue as am­mu­ni­tion in a po­lit­i­cal game. 

“This is un­fair to the peo­ple in this coun­try. I don’t know any­one in this coun­try who did not feel out­raged of what we were told were hap­pen­ing to the chil­dren of those homes. For it to now be­come this po­lit­i­cal foot­ball of self-serv­ing mis­cre­ants is an­oth­er fail­ing of this coun­try. The na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion in this coun­try needs to be up­lift­ed.”

Last week, Dr Row­ley claimed that his Gov­ern­ment was not aware of the con­tents of the Robert Sab­ga re­port, al­though Hansard records have shown that in 2000, then PNM Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Camille Robin­son-Reg­is ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of the re­port in in­form­ing poli­cies to pro­tect chil­dren. 

How­ev­er, yes­ter­day the Prime Min­is­ter main­tained that he had not seen the re­port and said it was not laid in Par­lia­ment. 

“There are a lot of peo­ple telling lies,” he said. 

“I have seen col­leagues of mine at­tempt­ing to say that it was (laid in Par­lia­ment) and if there is any­thing that needs to be chal­lenged, that is what needs to be chal­lenged. There’s no back­lash com­ing my way. If I sit in Par­lia­ment and I hear some­body who had the re­port mak­ing ref­er­ence to it, am I to say I have seen it or have heard it or it was laid there?”

“I am pre­pared to stand the con­se­quences of my ac­tions what­ev­er they might be and there­fore I don’t have to lie to get a bet­ter out­come,” Dr Row­ley said.

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