Akash Sama­roo

De­spite vo­cif­er­ous and un­re­served ob­jec­tions from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), the Gov­ern­ment has con­firmed Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo will be its nom­i­nee come Jan­u­ary 20th when the Elec­toral Col­lege meets to elect this coun­try’s sev­enth Head of State.

“This mat­ter is go­ing very smooth­ly, ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion, ac­cord­ing to the prac­tice and ac­cord­ing to our his­to­ry,” Dr Kei­th Row­ley told jour­nal­ists dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, armed with his own copy of the Con­sti­tu­tion, Dr Kei­th Row­ley seemed pre­pared to re­spond specif­i­cal­ly to UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s at­tacks on Kan­ga­loo.

“He has to be dealt with,” the Prime Min­is­ter said stern­ly.

The Prime Min­is­ter said Mark has been in the me­dia call­ing Kan­ga­loo and “PNM yes woman and pup­pet.” He said Mark was even ques­tion­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Kan­ga­loo’s nom­i­na­tion.

With the Con­sti­tu­tion in hand, Dr Row­ley flipped to page 29, para­graph 24 and read aloud, “Where a mem­ber of the Sen­ate or the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives is elect­ed as Pres­i­dent, his seat in the Sen­ate or the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives shall there­upon be­come va­cant.”

Dr Row­ley said the pur­pose of him read­ing out the law was for the ben­e­fit of “John Pub­lic” who, he claimed, was be­ing mis­led by the “horse ma­nure com­ing down from the UNC and those oth­ers.”

But the Prime Min­is­ter said he was not sur­prised at go­ing in­to the Elec­toral Col­lege with­out UNC sup­port, as he claimed his­to­ry has shown that the Op­po­si­tion’s mo­tive is to ob­ject to every­thing in spite of its ben­e­fit for the na­tion.

He then drew ref­er­ence to the elec­tion of for­mer Pres­i­dent Arhtur Napolean Ray­mond Robin­son, who he said was the UNC gov­ern­ment’s pick for Pres­i­dent in 1997. The Prime Min­is­ter said he went against the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment nom­i­na­tion and vot­ed for Robin­son in the Elec­toral Col­lege.

“I was a mem­ber of the House, an Op­po­si­tion mem­ber, and in the con­ver­sa­tion in my par­ty, I did not agree with the nom­i­na­tion of­fered by my or­gan­i­sa­tion. But the Con­sti­tu­tion makes pro­vi­sion for se­cret bal­lot for good rea­son and when the votes were count­ed on this day in the Par­lia­ment, you would have seen that Mr Robin­son got more votes than the votes of the par­ty that spon­sored him, and I think that’s im­por­tant,” he said.

Dr Row­ley added that he was al­so not the on­ly one who vot­ed for the UNC’s nom­i­na­tion.

“I think there was at least two oth­er votes from the PNM, so the process and the sys­tem worked,” he said, in an ap­par­ent de­fence against those who felt that rul­ing par­ty would al­ways have the ad­van­tage in the vot­ing process by virtue of its strength in both hous­es.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so again de­fend­ed Kan­ga­loo as his choice for Head of State.

The main ar­gu­ments against Kan­ga­loo in­clude her long af­fil­i­a­tion to the PNM and the fact that she is a sit­ting Sen­ate Pres­i­dent, al­so earned via a PNM nom­i­na­tion, which many be­lieve will make it hard for her to be an in­de­pen­dent mind in the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent.

When Guardian Me­dia asked Row­ley if there was any­one with­out po­lit­i­cal ties who could have been con­sid­ered, the Prime Min­is­ter said they did weigh quite a few peo­ple but Kan­ga­loo stood out.

“Be­fore the Gov­ern­ment came to a con­clu­sion, we did look from Ce­dros to Char­lot­teville, San­gre Grande to Care­nage, to see who are the peo­ple we can con­sid­er to ap­proach and we did that and we be­lieve we came up with what is in ef­fect a good choice.”

The PM said while there may be peo­ple against her ap­point­ment, there are al­so thou­sands in sup­port of Kan­ga­loo. He al­so said there aren’t many pres­i­dents in­ter­na­tion­al­ly who have nev­er been in­volved in the po­lit­i­cal are­na.

“I’m not im­pressed with the fact that if you’re not con­nect­ed with any­thing in the coun­try, it qual­i­fies you to be hold­ing the high­est of­fice in the land.”

Mean­while, asked by Guardian Me­dia what he thought about the UNC’s pick for on Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan, Row­ley said he was not sur­prised by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s choice.

“Is­rael Khan is her per­son­al lawyer, Is­rael Khan has been in a num­ber of po­lit­i­cal par­ties, the ONR, the NAR and I dare­say he was a UNC ac­tivist. Is­rael Khan has been very out­spo­ken in abus­ing me pub­licly and the PNM and oth­ers and there­fore I think that’s a good pick for Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.”

He ex­plained that the next step will be Kan­ga­loo va­cat­ing her po­si­tion of Sen­ate Pres­i­dent in prepa­ra­tion for Jan­u­ary 20th’s sit­ting of the Elec­toral Col­lege, where the Pres­i­dent will be elect­ed.

With a wry smile, he said he has some­one in mind to re­place Kan­ga­loo in the Up­per House but he is not yet ready to re­veal that name.