Loyse Vin­cent

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the on­ly way in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to on­go­ing fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tions at state en­ti­ties will be con­clud­ed is if the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is kept out of gov­ern­ment.

He made the con­clu­sion dur­ing a pub­lic meet­ing at the Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School on Sun­day night as he high­light­ed two cas­es where the for­mer gov­ern­ment is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed of fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty.

“You should know what hap­pened to your mon­ey and who should be held ac­count­able,” Row­ley told sup­port­ers.

“Do you ex­pect them to work with the gov­ern­ment and con­clude these in­ves­ti­ga­tions based on what they did with the Pi­ar­co Air­port en­quiry? Do you think that these peo­ple and any­body else they serve want to con­clude the in­ves­ti­ga­tions?”

The Prime Min­is­ter read the con­tents of a Sun­day Guardian re­port by Mark Bas­sant, which gave de­tails on an al­leged scheme by a promi­nent politi­cian which re­sult­ed in $549 mil­lion be­ing spent on an in­flat­ed road con­tract by the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment (EM­BD) com­pa­ny six weeks be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion in 2015.

The scope of works un­der the EM­BD in­volved a se­ries of road up­grade projects. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions, there were cas­es of over-in­fla­tion of prices, ad­di­tion­al fund­ing be­ing sought for ex­tra projects in some cas­es and claims for work which was not done.

Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, cas­es sim­i­lar to these drove his Gov­ern­ment to se­cret­ly or­ches­trate the sud­den change of the old 100-dol­lar note to poly­mer the new note.

“It had to be done in se­cret be­cause had they known, those who had cash in the bar­rels and box­es, wher­ev­er they had it, had they known, they would have moved heav­en and earth to get it in­to the bank­ing sys­tem be­fore time to close,” he said.

Row­ley said as a re­sult of this ac­tion by his Gov­ern­ment, al­most $500 mil­lion in old notes were nev­er re­deemed for ex­change.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so went on to de­tail a re­port from the Dutch po­lice, where in­ves­ti­ga­tions are al­so on­go­ing sur­round­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of 12 Damen ves­sels at a to­tal cost of TT$1.358 bil­lion in 2015.

He said while the Op­po­si­tion has been lead­ing the call to close the coun­try’s bor­ders, they are the ones who can­celled the ves­sels pro­cured un­der the then Patrick Man­ning gov­ern­ment when they as­sumed of­fice.

“They had a lot to say - close the bor­ders, close the bor­ders af­ter they can­celled the pa­trol ves­sels which are the tools for clos­ing the bor­ders and guns and women over­run the coun­try from South Amer­i­ca.”

Row­ley asked the pub­lic to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions by let­ting the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to these probes come to clo­sure, adding this could on­ly hap­pen if the PNM re­mains in of­fice.

But in a re­sponse yes­ter­day, UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion can­not be used as a PNM po­lit­i­cal tool in this elec­tion sea­son.

“In­stead of of­fer­ing so­lu­tions to deal with the nu­mer­ous so­cio-eco­nom­ic is­sues fac­ing cit­i­zens that have emerged due to his poor lead­er­ship, Row­ley is us­ing the same tac­tic he em­ployed in the 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign with his Email­gate ac­cu­sa­tions, which were de­bunked and shown to be false,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in a state­ment.

“Row­ley must be re­mind­ed that in­ves­ti­ga­tions cur­rent­ly un­der­way re­main a po­lice mat­ter and must be dealt with by the po­lice. It is rather un­eth­i­cal, if not in to­tal con­tra­ven­tion of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers which bol­sters our democ­ra­cy, that the head of the po­lit­i­cal arm of the state would be seek­ing to utilise in­for­ma­tion from an in­de­pen­dent arm of the State for po­lit­i­cal ben­e­fit.

“How can the Prime Min­is­ter be privy to such in­for­ma­tion, es­pe­cial­ly on the eve of an elec­tion? Clear­ly, the dis­clo­sure of such in­for­ma­tion is not be­ing done in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est but be­ing done in the in­ter­est of the PNM.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “We un­der­stand that the Prime Min­is­ter is los­ing sup­port and is feel­ing the pres­sure of such, re­sult­ing in his ‘bul­ly­ing at­ti­tude’ to­wards his op­po­nents, but a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion can­not be used as a Bal­isi­er House po­lit­i­cal tool. The hard-work­ing mem­bers of our TTPS and their work must be left off the PNM’s plat­forms.

“The re­cent al­le­ga­tions rep­re­sent the fact that the Prime Min­is­ter has done noth­ing for this na­tion’s de­vel­op­ment in the last five years and is seek­ing to run a cam­paign like 2015, hop­ing to re­tain pow­er on al­le­ga­tions, un­truths and dis­trac­tions. It is an in­sult to the suf­fer­ing cit­i­zens of our na­tion, and is the lat­est ex­am­ple that Row­ley is a leader who is in­ca­pable of lead­ing a na­tion.”