Chester Sam­bra­no

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ac­cused the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress of not want­i­ng to see the Petrotrin re­fin­ery in Pointe-a-Pierre up and run­ning, la­belling the par­ty as “un­pa­tri­ot­ic louts” for its at­tack on In­di­an busi­ness­man Navin Jin­dal, which led to him pulling out of a bid for the re­fin­ery.

Dr Row­ley’s lat­est com­ments on the mat­ter came via a Face­book post he made while cur­rent­ly in Samoa for the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM). It was ap­par­ent­ly prompt­ed by a pho­to on the cov­er page of a doc­u­ment which con­tained a re­port from Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Baroness Pa­tri­cia Scot­land. The cov­er of the doc­u­ment fea­tured Jin­dal hand­ing over an award on be­half of the O.P. Jin­dal Glob­al Uni­ver­si­ty of In­dia.

In his post, Dr Row­ley asks, “Isn’t it iron­ic that at the same time al­most to the hour, that Mr Jin­dal is pre­sent­ed to the Com­mon­wealth in this way, he is be­ing ex­co­ri­at­ed and slan­dered in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Par­lia­ment by the UNC, led by the usu­al sus­pects Wade Mark and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar!

“What is Mr Jin­dal’s crime that makes him and his com­pa­ny so of­fen­sive to the UNC and their fol­low­ers? He, one of the rich­est men in In­dia, brought one of the biggest in­dus­tri­al busi­ness­es to Trinidad to take a look at our re­fin­ery (moth­balled since 2018) with a view to mak­ing a $500 mil­lion USD in­vest­ment to get the re­fin­ery up and run­ning again un­der new arrange­ments that ought not to threat­en to bank­rupt the coun­try and in whose hands an ad­e­quate sup­ply of crude would have been made avail­able.”

He added, “To­day I look at this pic­ture as it was pre­sent­ed here in Samoa and I feel sad that my own peo­ple could be so wicked to our own peo­ple.

“Do you know what $500 mil­lion USD at Pointe-a-Pierre would have done for thou­sands of peo­ple, in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es, in what they call, “fence line” com­mu­ni­ties, as if they care about them? They on­ly care about them­selves and they are on­ly con­cerned about elec­tions.”

On Mon­day, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark de­mand­ed that the Petrotrin bid­ding pro­ce­dure be scrapped and a crim­i­nal foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion be ini­ti­at­ed. He claimed Jin­dal’s fam­i­ly was con­nect­ed to DR Com­modi­ties, which is one of three short­list­ed com­pa­nies now in­volved in the bid­ding process.

How­ev­er, act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young brushed aside this claim, say­ing Gov­ern­ment will go ahead with the short­list­ed en­ti­ties.

In his post yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley said any right-think­ing cit­i­zen should want a Petrotrin deal done.

“No, not the UNC. When I tell you all that these are the most de­struc­tive, un­pa­tri­ot­ic louts amongst us, you all don’t be­lieve me. All they are con­cerned about is po­lit­i­cal pow­er to clean out the trea­sury,” he said.

“Elec­tions. Elec­tions is their mantra. How did Mr Jin­dal end up in the UNC cross-hairs?”

Row­ley said what the UNC fail to re­alise is that the PNM is sat­is­fied it has fixed a prob­lem at Petrotrin.

He said Her­itage is up and run­ning suc­cess­ful­ly and is prof­itable, pay­ing bil­lions in tax­es and ser­vic­ing the Petrotrin US$850 mil­lion debt that threat­ened to bank­rupt the coun­try. Paria, he said, is al­so run­ning and mak­ing a tidy prof­it.

“So back to Mr Jin­dal, what is his crime? He talked to the Prime Min­is­ter! His peo­ple were in the da­ta room when the UNC lead­er­ship launched a scorch­ing cam­paign against him and his com­pa­ny. They knew, and their imps in To­ba­go, that like San­dals, these are fam­i­ly busi­ness­es, owned and run by peo­ple who will shy far away from un­war­rant­ed slan­der­ous at­tacks so they go full speed ahead hop­ing to ob­struct progress.

“Well, they have suc­ceed­ed. We have to be the most squeaky clean coun­try where a com­pa­ny like the Jin­dal Group, which is among the wealth­i­est, most suc­cess­ful of busi­ness­es in In­dia, a ma­jor Com­mon­wealth coun­try, op­er­at­ing all over the world, is wel­comed by the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at but not ap­proved by the UNC who on­ly see “scan­dal.”