Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A most sig­nif­i­cant elec­tion is ahead and the pub­lic will be ad­vised and when they’re ad­vised, they’ll be en­er­gised, says Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

"And when you’re en­er­gised, you’ll know your in­ter­est lies with the po­lit­i­cal par­ty that took us to In­de­pen­dence and Re­pub­li­can sta­tus and through all dif­fi­cul­ties and is re­spon­si­ble for all the pos­i­tives you can point to in T&T - that par­ty is the PNM,” the PM added.

Row­ley made the point at last night’s Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing at Trop­i­cal An­gel Harps pan yard in Ch­agua­nas.

He not­ed, "The next elec­tion com­ing up may be the most sig­nif­i­cant one in T&T’s his­to­ry.”

Row­ley slammed the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for a large part of his ad­dress, in­clud­ing for try­ing to force him to give in­for­ma­tion on the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) mat­ter in Par­lia­ment.

He not­ed Wednes­day’s Par­lia­ment sit­ting, where he’d an­swered Op­po­si­tion ques­tions on the SSA is­sue, yet he said the UNC was abus­ing Par­lia­men­tary priv­i­leges “de­mand­ing I tell them” what the po­lice was do­ing, look­ing for and who they were in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

But Row­ley said his Gov­ern­ment was a re­spon­si­ble one and “that ent hap­pen­ing here”!

Row­ley said the UNC was an "ir­re­spon­si­ble mad bunch". He said the agen­cies han­dling the SSA mat­ter will take their time to in­ves­ti­gate, talk to who they want to, “and what the Par­lia­ment should know, it will know and even­tu­al­ly, all of us will know”.

Row­ley said in the emer­gency in the SSA mat­ter, when some­one had to be found to head the agency, re­tired brigadier gen­er­al An­tho­ny Phillips Spencer was con­tact­ed and he stepped in and took the post. But Row­ley said the Op­po­si­tion leader could on­ly tell peo­ple “be care­ful who you phone” be­cause he’d put Phillips Spencer to “spy on peo­ple".

Row­ley slammed al­so Pro­fes­sor Sel­wyn Cud­joe for say­ing at a UNC an­ti-crime con­sul­ta­tion that the Prime Min­is­ter’s wealth should be ex­am­ined to cor­re­late the growth of his wealth with the growth of crime in T&T.

Row­ley said, "Tonight I want to say to Sel­wyn Cud­joe: you just haul!”

He ques­tioned what wealth he has for Cud­joe to want to cor­re­late it to mur­der and may­hem in T&T.

"My wealth is my health – thank God.”

Row­ley said the UNC has peo­ple in Par­lia­ment who their col­league had told the po­lice was en­gaged in hu­man traf­fick­ing and an­oth­er one was al­so on $1 mil­lion bail. "And Cud­joe ent see dat!" he added.

Row­ley al­so slammed the UNC for seek­ing the cost of the Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter event on Tues­day. He not­ed UNC's Vas­ant Bharath's What is Hap­pi­ness pro­gramme dur­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment's tenure.

Row­ley al­so crit­i­cised UNC's Moru­ga MP, as well as St Lu­cia op­po­si­tion leader Allen Chas­tenet. He said he will be speak­ing more on rev­enue mat­ters in meet­ings ahead and al­so said the PNM will be mak­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the team deal­ing with rec­om­men­da­tions for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

Youth De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings, who de­tailed youth projects, al­so slammed the UNC.

"Any­one think­ing of re­turn­ing the UNC - wake up from that sleep! To re­turn that ir­re­spon­si­ble reck­less crew led by the for­mer PM, now Op­po­si­tion leader, will be a reck­less act and not have peo­ple's best in­ter­ests at heart. No mat­ter who they try to ‘mar­ry' and line up with, whether they make-up, break-up or shake-up, we’ll not en­ter­tain a UNC gov­ern­ment again - we know their track record, we un­der­stand their bad ways and won't be fooled!” Cum­mings said.

"Un­like an­oth­er leader who say ‘load up the ‘mat­ic!’, we say take up your book, ed­u­cate your­self, open a busi­ness and put down your guns! De­vel­op your­self! What a reck­less leader – nev­er again Kam­la!"

He added, "No mat­ter how much wed­ding dress they put on, how much break-up or make-up they have - no more UNC! En­ter­prise - I don't want you to for­get, you had two PNM coun­cil­lors and you re­placed them for two UNC. I ask you to give the PNM the Ch­agua­nas East seat so we could con­tin­ue to gov­ern T&T for the ben­e­fit of all cit­i­zens."

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan ear­li­er de­tailed the ag­gres­sive road pro­gramme since 2023, when over 500 road projects were done. Among these, he not­ed two pack­ages for the To­co road will start short­ly, where the min­istry hopes “to start the port there one day very soon”.

Sinanan said road work in­cludes in Port-of-Spain, where he said roads were in poor state for too long and sig­nif­i­cant work was done. The 2024 re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion tar­get is the same and while not all can be done at once, he said it con­tin­ues on a phased ba­sis un­til “every road in T&T's ad­dressed".