Akash Sama­roo

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is lament­ing that this coun­try’s “sys­tem” is en­cour­ag­ing white-col­lar crime. And he says the crim­i­nals are very much aware of this and in some cas­es are even cel­e­brat­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“There are peo­ple in our sys­tem, in our coun­try, who run in­ter­fer­ence for crim­i­nals. In fact, right now, some crim­i­nals are he­roes, I don’t want to call any names,” Dr Row­ley said dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain.

He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia’s Con­sul­tant Busi­ness Ed­i­tor An­tho­ny Wil­son, who re­mind­ed the Prime Min­is­ter that the coun­try is still wait­ing for jus­tice to be served to the so-called “big fish” crim­i­nals in so­ci­ety.

“Do you agree that in the al­most 61 years of this coun­try’s in­de­pen­dence, no ‘big fish’ with re­gard to white-col­lar crime has been tak­en down and would you not agree that fact has con­se­quences for the preva­lence for white-col­lar crimes in this coun­try?” Wil­son asked.

“Ab­solute­ly,” Dr Row­ley replied im­me­di­ate­ly, “Our sys­tem does not dis­cour­age, on the con­trary, I re­gret to say it has en­cour­aged white-col­lar crim­i­nal con­duct.”

The Prime Min­is­ter then re­count­ed a spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion that “irks” him.

“There was a sit­u­a­tion in­side the Par­lia­ment, where a staff mem­ber used his sta­tion to steal mon­ey in­side the Par­lia­ment. We were made aware of it, we knew who the per­son was, and noth­ing has hap­pened about it.”

The PM then spoke of an­oth­er sit­u­a­tion which he said took place in the pri­vate sec­tor.

“An of­fi­cer stole $5 mil­lion from a busi­ness house and that busi­ness house has been try­ing to get the Fraud Squad in­ter­est­ed in pros­e­cut­ing that mat­ter and you know how I know that, they com­plain to me. But what can I do? I don’t run the Fraud Squad, and the per­son ac­tu­al­ly wrote a note say­ing they stole the mon­ey, so I can tell you An­tho­ny (Wil­son), I know the frus­tra­tions be­cause I live here.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said what is fright­en­ing is that pub­lic of­fice­hold­ers like the Op­po­si­tion Leader and mem­bers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress are try­ing to nor­malise this sit­u­a­tion.

“Feel­ing sor­ry for per­sons be­fore the court, pro­mot­ing them and ad­vanc­ing them in the Par­lia­ment, what do you think it does to the crim­i­nal el­e­ment when they see a man in Par­lia­ment on a mil­lion dol­lars bail? What do you think young peo­ple in school would think when they’re com­ing up in this coun­try and say­ing ‘if they lock me up and I’m on bail, I could still get my job’?”

He added, “We had a chair­man of a cor­po­ra­tion here charged with bribery, and he was still al­lowed to chair the cor­po­ra­tion, in San­gre Grande. An­oth­er one was charged with bribery, he was run­ning the ten­ders com­mit­tee in the cor­po­ra­tion, those are stan­dards that the pop­u­la­tion must re­ject as out of hand.”

The Prime Min­is­ter ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar for seem­ing to stick up for the DPP as a way of “cur­ry­ing favour” from him.

Dr Row­ley re­it­er­at­ed that as a mem­ber of the Ex­ec­u­tive arm of Gov­ern­ment he can­not pros­e­cute any­one.

“I know this coun­try and I know about this coun­try and what I can tell you is that this Gov­ern­ment is not go­ing to pro­tect wrong­do­ing and we will not be shy­ing away from pur­su­ing it, but there’s a lim­it to what the Ex­ec­u­tive can do.”

He said in or­der for this coun­try to get its in­de­pen­dence, some arrange­ments were agreed to, which he de­scribed as in­im­i­cal to good or­der.

On Mon­day, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira an­nounced that he will be bring­ing a mo­tion to the Sen­ate which will re­quest that the Con­sti­tu­tion be re­viewed for its rel­e­vance in a mod­ern con­text.

Asked if he be­lieves it is time for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, Row­ley said, “I heard my friend Bas­deo Pan­day say­ing that yes­ter­day, but what ex­act­ly in the Con­sti­tu­tion you want to change? What as­pect of the Con­sti­tu­tion you want to re­form? Be­cause that catch-all phrase of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, what ex­act­ly are you go­ing to re­form?

“I say this whole ques­tion of su­per in­de­pen­dence of in­de­pen­dent ser­vice com­mis­sions is some­thing that needs to be looked at in mod­ern Trinidad and To­ba­go, it has cre­at­ed mod­els that are in­im­i­cal to good or­der and it dam­ages good man­age­ment.”

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter said that dis­cus­sion is for an­oth­er time.