RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter
rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Un­leash­ing a sting­ing at­tack against Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the lo­cal me­dia and black-skinned peo­ple, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Thurs­day de­nied he is a dic­ta­tor who had breached peo­ple’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights by not call­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

Speak­ing at a PNM po­lit­i­cal ral­ly at San Fer­nan­do City Hall au­di­to­ri­um, on Thurs­day night, Dr Row­ley gave a fierce de­fence of his for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi for go­ing af­ter white-col­lar crim­i­nals.

Giv­ing a de­tailed overview of the 19-year-old Pi­ar­co air­port scan­dal, Dr Row­ley praised Al-Rawi who rep­re­sent­ed T&T as the civ­il as­set for­fei­ture case stem­ming from the Pi­ar­co cor­rup­tion probe be­gan last March.

The gov­ern­ment lost the case at the Privy Coun­cil but the Prime Min­is­ter said Al-Rawi had done his du­ty to this coun­try.

Con­demn­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar for “con­tin­u­al­ly at­tack­ing Al-Rawi as he pur­sued the case,” Dr Row­ley told his sup­port­ers: “If you hear them! Faris Faris! Faris. Fire Faris! Every­day Fire Faris! That un­re­lent­ing call to fire Faris.”

The Prime Min­is­ter ex­plained: “They want­ed him out as the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. Faris was au­tho­rised to fol­low white-col­lar crime and he did so bril­liant­ly. If I was stu­pid to par­take in that ad­vice that 1 bil­lion dol­lar case would have fall­en,” he said, adding that the gov­ern­ment had won the case in the low­er courts.

Dr Row­ley then pro­ceed­ed to chas­tise main­stream me­dia say­ing: “ The lo­cal me­dia has a lot to an­swer for. Imag­ine that case is go­ing on.”

He added: “ The Min­is­ter sit­ting there for one month and you can read noth­ing about it. Ask your­self, what cov­er­age was giv­en?” Guardian Me­dia’s Gail Alexan­der had re­port­ed on the case but the Prime Min­is­ter made no ref­er­ence to that.

In­stead, he told his sup­port­ers that the me­dia was in ca­hoots with peo­ple who did not like the PNM. This caused some mem­bers of the au­di­ence to jeer at me­dia work­ers. One woman from To­ba­go shout­ed: “All you too nasty.”

The Prime Min­is­ter chas­tised the me­dia for re­port­ing on le­gal fees, not­ing: “Lawyers are not cheap.”

Next Dr Row­ley con­tin­ued his scathing at­tack on Per­sad-Bisses­sar whom he ac­cused of hid­ing resti­tu­tion monies which the gov­ern­ment ob­tained from peo­ple who had plead­ed guilty in an Amer­i­can court.

“When the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment seized and jailed the Amer­i­cans who plead­ed guilty to cor­rup­tion, some of the resti­tu­tion mon­ey came back here and Kam­la re­ceived that mon­ey in si­lence and nev­er said a word,” he al­leged.

He again re­it­er­at­ed that he had no re­grets about hav­ing Al-Rawi on the case.

“I kept him there for 7 years and at the end of the sev­en years mis­sion ac­com­plished!” he added. Dr Row­ley al­so al­leged that for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan had re­fused to pros­e­cute the mat­ter for five years. He re­called the scan­dal of Sec­tion 34 say­ing back then he had led the charge to have T&T stand up to the then-Per­sad-Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment.

Fi­nal­ly, Dr Row­ley lashed out at “black-skinned peo­ple.”

“I have seen peo­ple make ref­er­ence to my skin colour as if it is some­thing that dis­qual­i­fies me. That should not both­er me and should not both­er you. And imag­ine most of that damn non­sense comes from black peo­ple. Imag­ine Black peo­ple call­ing me black. They say­ing I am black. If they know how I love my black colour,” he said, as the au­di­ence cheered.

He said the whole coun­try should re­mem­ber the his­to­ry of UNC cor­rup­tion and let that de­ter­mine their choice of vot­ing. Dr Row­ley al­so called on peo­ple to help in the crime fight say­ing 10,000 po­lice of­fi­cers could not po­lice every home of 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple.