Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Prime Min­is­ter is crit­i­cis­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress for fail­ing to meet with the Gov­ern­ment to dis­cuss an­ti-crime mea­sures while find­ing time to meet with St Lu­cia’s Op­po­si­tion Leader Allen Chas­tanet, a man he called “Trop­i­cal Trump”.

Speak­ing with mem­bers of the pub­lic at his Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter se­ries at Skif­fle Bunch Pan The­atre in San Fer­nan­do, Dr Kei­th Row­ley blunt­ly stat­ed, “Our coun­try has a se­ri­ous crime prob­lem. It makes you won­der who pro­duced all these mur­der­ers? All of us are trau­ma­tised, ha­rassed and threat­ened by the mis­be­hav­iour of a small num­ber of peo­ple.”

Dr Row­ley said this coun­try’s Pres­i­dent re­quest­ed that both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion find com­mon ground to com­bat this coun­try’s crime scourge. He said that was the cat­a­lyst for the yet-to-hap­pen meet­ing be­tween the two po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that soon af­ter, he ap­point­ed four peo­ple to rep­re­sent the Gov­ern­ment and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was tasked to chair the meet­ing.

“I did that with­in a week of that be­ing agreed as the way to go, up to this day the Op­po­si­tion has not named any­body to sit down with the Gov­ern­ment team to dis­cuss the mat­ters we are all very fa­mil­iar with,” Dr Row­ley said.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has made it clear in the past that she be­lieves the Prime Min­is­ter should be present at those meet­ings, a po­si­tion Dr Row­ley has dis­agreed with.

“That sound like sense to you?” he asked the au­di­ence.

He added, how­ev­er, that while the Op­po­si­tion can­not find time for this na­tion­al cri­sis, they did find time to have a meet­ing with Chas­tanet.

“As if St Lu­cia, who has Chas­tanet in their gov­ern­ment to run their coun­try, threw him out of of­fice, un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly, but he in Trinidad try­ing to tell us how to run Trinidad, no thanks Trop­i­cal Trump,” Dr Row­ley said, spark­ing laugh­ter from the au­di­ence.

Chas­tanet spoke at the UNC’s Mon­day night an­ti-crime meet­ing in San­gre Grande, where he hailed Per­sad-Bisses­sar as a vi­sion­ary.

Mean­while, the Prime Min­is­ter lament­ed that he is be­ing over­whelmed by peo­ple who now live in mor­tal fear of peo­ple they helped to put in jail, but who are now out on bail.  

But Dr Row­ley told the au­di­ence that while his Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to put crim­i­nals in­to jail cells, the Op­po­si­tion UNC’s fo­cus was to get them out by not sup­port­ing an ex­ten­sion to the Bail Amend­ment Bill.

He said the star­tling re­al­i­ty was that “there are peo­ple in this coun­try who are choos­ing crim­i­nal con­duct as a way of life.”  

He added that even in that con­text, the UNC thought mur­der­ers should be grant­ed bail.

“So now we are more con­cerned about those who have been con­vict­ed in the jail, but I don’t see any con­cern for the wit­ness­es who got them in the jail, who got them con­vict­ed, who now have to live on the same street with the mur­der­er who has got bail and who knows who got them there,” Dr Row­ley said.

The Prime Min­is­ter ques­tioned who would now want to be a wit­ness to aid the po­lice.

Dr Row­ley sought to as­sure that the Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing the right de­ci­sions to com­bat crime and used the re­cent change of lead­er­ship of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) as an ex­am­ple.

He touched briefly on the mat­ter, re­it­er­at­ing what he said on Mon­day. Dr Row­ley said he un­der­stands the pub­lic wants more an­swers, but he can­not at this time tell peo­ple every­thing the Gov­ern­ment knows. He said the pub­lic will have to trust that the Gov­ern­ment is act­ing in their best in­ter­est.