Three days af­ter Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo called for uni­ty amongst par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to deal with crime, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has sig­nalled that he will make the first move to ini­ti­ate such dis­cus­sions with the Op­po­si­tion.

Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day, Row­ley said he plans to write to Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to in­vite her to ses­sions to present her plans to tack­le the coun­try’s high crime rate.

In her maid­en speech to both hous­es dur­ing the Cer­e­mo­ni­al Open­ing of the Fourth sit­ting of the 12th Ses­sion of the Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, Kan­ga­loo urged the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to put aside par­ti­san pol­i­tics to re­solve the crime woes af­flict­ing the coun­try.

“The ur­gency is ob­vi­ous. The pain and the suf­fer­ing are un­bear­able. These alone should dri­ve par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to put aside their par­ty ri­val­ries, join hands across the aisle, and col­lab­o­rate on how to stem crime and crim­i­nal con­duct,” Kan­ga­loo said.

Fol­low­ing Kan­ga­loo’s speech, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress was ready and will­ing to co­op­er­ate with the Gov­ern­ment.

Ad­dress­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s over­ture yes­ter­day, Row­ley said, “Hav­ing heard the Op­po­si­tion Leader speak on Mon­day, I in­tend to write to her and to ask her to sup­ply or to re­ceive per­son­nel from the Gov­ern­ment on the is­sue of crime and the Gov­ern­ment will re­ceive from her side on the is­sue of crime and let us see what com­mon ground ex­ist that the par­lia­ment can deal with.”

How­ev­er, while he sig­nalled he was ready for talks, Row­ley said try­ing to unite with the Op­po­si­tion is not some­thing new, not­ing he made mul­ti­ple at­tempts to do so in 2015.

“As Op­po­si­tion leader, I didn’t wait for peo­ple to tell me to co­op­er­ate with the gov­ern­ment. I saw that as a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. So, as Op­po­si­tion leader, I vot­ed for the bud­get that the gov­ern­ment brought to the par­lia­ment in 2015. It is the on­ly time that the Op­po­si­tion vot­ed for the gov­ern­ment’s bud­get be­cause I saw it as a new be­gin­ning,” he said.

He said he then went a step fur­ther when the roles were switched, and he be­came Prime Min­is­ter, seek­ing to once again work to­geth­er.

Row­ley said he reached out to Per­sad-Bisses­sar think­ing they would have been able to meet, but things did not go as planned.

“When I be­came Prime Min­is­ter, I reached out to the Op­po­si­tion leader think­ing I could have an arrange­ment where we’ll meet in mu­tu­al re­spect. I don’t have to tell you that one of the prob­lems that we have in the coun­try is a to­tal lack of and loss of re­spect. And, as a re­sult of that, af­ter the way that first meet­ing went, it was made quite clear that fu­ture meet­ings were not on, and they served no use­ful pur­pose.”

De­spite this, he said, the Gov­ern­ment was quite will­ing to use all the pro­vi­sions with­in the par­lia­ment for both sides of the bench to meet once again.

He said his Gov­ern­ment was not one that had to “un­der­mine”, “pull down”, “bad talk” or not co­op­er­ate in or­der to win an elec­tion.

He added too, that no one could point a fin­ger in his di­rec­tion, in­di­cat­ing his Gov­ern­ment’s un­will­ing­ness to col­lab­o­rate if the op­por­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed it­self.

Con­tact­ed hours af­ter the PM’s state­ment yes­ter­day, UNC PRO Kirk Meighoo said the UNC had no com­ment to make at that time.