Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is in­sist­ing he did not know what port­fo­lio As­drubal Chavez held when he met with him and Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez on March 27th.

While he ad­mits to meet­ing With Ro­driguez and Chavez, he said Chavez was not an of­fi­cial at PDVSA at the time and was on­ly pro­mot­ed to the post weeks lat­er. The Prime Min­is­ter ad­dressed the is­sue in re­sponse to a Trinidad Guardian ed­i­to­r­i­al yes­ter­day which called on the Gov­ern­ment to make pub­lic the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing con­tract in­volv­ing fu­el ty­coon Wilmer Ru­per­ti and con­firm whether a let­ter sent from Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young ex­empt­ing the Venezue­lan del­e­ga­tion to en­ter T&T was gen­uine.

The let­ter, dat­ed March 26, 2020, was ad­dressed to Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer Char­maine Gand­hi-An­drews and signed by the Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Gary Joseph. The list con­tra­dict­ed claims by Young that he was un­aware of who came with Ro­driguez on the plane, as the men’s names were list­ed along with their pass­port num­bers.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from the Guardian on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Row­ley said, “For your ben­e­fit and for the ben­e­fit of the pub­lic whom you all con­tin­ue to mis­lead, I said “no one was in­tro­duced as Pres­i­dent of PDVSA”. That is a fact be­cause the head of PDVSA was NOT there, con­trary to the mis­in­for­ma­tion put out there. Mr Chavez was made head of PDVSA one month AF­TER I met with him.”

Chavez was named PDVSA’s pres­i­dent on April 28. Apart from Chavez, Juan Vin­cente San­tana, PDVSA’s vice pres­i­dent of gas, was al­so part of the del­e­ga­tion.

The Prime Min­is­ter, how­ev­er, main­tained yes­ter­day that he on­ly met with Ro­driguez and Chavez.

“With re­spect to ALL the oth­er per­sons on your “smok­ing gun list”, NONE of them came in­to my pres­ence so there was no in­tro­duc­tion be­cause those per­sons (se­cu­ri­ty, pro­to­col etc) NEV­ER even en­tered the room in which I met TWO per­sons, Ro­driguez and Chavez,” Row­ley said.

“I take time to tell you this so that you now have no ex­cuse to mis­rep­re­sent any of these FACTS, as you pur­sue what­ev­er mis­sion you are on.”

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young, who was al­so present at the March 26 meet­ing, said no notes, min­utes or pic­tures were tak­en at the meet­ing. Row­ley de­fend­ed this prac­tice and de­nied that it was in­dica­tive of a se­cu­ri­ty lapse.

“With re­spect to the is­sue of min­utes and agen­da, if I want­ed to waste valu­able time I would have sent you a long list of heads of Govt., heads of state, mon­archs, heads of in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions and com­pa­nies that I have met and with whom I con­duct­ed dis­cus­sions and cour­tesy calls, where there was no writ­ten agen­das or writ­ten record of the con­ver­sa­tion,” he said.

“How­ev­er, I pre­fer to use my time pro­duc­tive­ly as I re­mem­ber that it is said that “a man (or woman) con­vinced against his will is of the same opin­ion still.” Good luck with your hunt.”

“At least you have found the truth but that may be too in­con­ve­nient for some peo­ple so I am over and out. Off to do the peo­ple’s busi­ness, the same peo­ple I’m try­ing to pro­tect from de­lib­er­ate false­hoods and self-serv­ing mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.”

When pressed about the au­then­tic­i­ty of the min­istry ex­emp­tion doc­u­ments PM Row­ley said he was “not con­duct­ing a Q&A.”

“I am sim­ply re­spond­ing with some facts re­lat­ed to your mis­di­rec­tion about MY ac­tions so that you will have no rea­son to get it wrong,” he said.

When asked what ex­act­ly the news­pa­per got wrong in its ed­i­to­r­i­al, Row­ley asked “Do you work for the Guardian? Did you not see me be­ing called a liar to­day (Thurs­day) be­cause my sto­ry does not fit the the­o­ries from “sources”? Did you, on that vein, not put to me ques­tions about per­sons not be­ing in­tro­duced to me?”

Told that the news­pa­per sim­ply asked for more trans­paren­cy on a top­ic cur­rent­ly oc­cu­py­ing the pub­lic do­main, Row­ley di­rect­ed a reread of the ed­i­to­r­i­al.

“Your idea of trans­paren­cy is for me to re­peat the truth every time a de­trac­tor gets a brain­wave and even then noth­ing I say will sat­is­fy,” the PM said.

“I re­mem­ber leav­ing here and go­ing abroad for med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion and was very con­cerned. I told that to the pub­lic. I went, did my tests, got a good re­sult and came back here and re­port­ed the na­ture of my med­ical pro­ce­dures and the doc­tor’s ver­dict that I did not have a prob­lem and did not need surgery as was pre­scribed here be­fore I went abroad. To my shock, a se­nior re­porter/ed­i­tor, in a col­umn, said he can’t ac­cept what I said un­til he sees the med­ical re­port for him­self. That is the trans­paren­cy that may change the di­et of mis­in­for­ma­tion.”

“How­ev­er, there was a pre­vi­ous Prime Min­is­ter who was hos­pi­talised with swollen feet and in ex­pla­na­tion told the coun­try that she was cook­ing at home and reached to open a cup­board and when she opened the door two cans of peas fell, one strik­ing her on each foot and that is why both feet are swollen. So I sym­pa­thise with any per­son who re­fus­es to be­lieve what any Prime Min­is­ter says (sic) af­ter that.”

He did not re­spond to a sub­se­quent ques­tion ask­ing why he would not want to be more trans­par­ent.

Row­ley had ear­li­er tak­en to his Face­book page to com­ment on the Trinidad Guardian ed­i­to­r­i­al piece.

He wrote: “Con­trary to what has been pub­lished in to­day’s Guardian Ed­i­to­r­i­al, I once again must con­firm that, notwith­stand­ing any list of names of pas­sen­gers on any man­i­fest or air­craft, the on­ly per­sons from Venezuela, who at­tend­ed a meet­ing with the Prime Min­is­ter, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in March 2020, were Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez ac­com­pa­nied by one oth­er per­son Mr Chavez, who was not the Pres­i­dent of PDVSA at that time. None of the oth­er per­sons (se­cu­ri­ty or oth­er of­fi­cials) who ac­com­pa­nied Mrs Ro­driguez con­duct­ed any meet­ing with any of­fi­cial/s of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. On the ba­sis of these in­dis­putable facts, to­day, I re­ject be­ing called a liar by the Guardian news­pa­per in fur­ther­ance of their in­ter­ests.”

See guardian ed­i­to­r­i­al to­day (page A12)