Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A for­mer prime min­is­ter says the out­come of Tues­day’s Unit­ed States midterm elec­tions should serve as a les­son for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day urged cit­i­zens to re­flect on the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tion and how much longer they are pre­pared to tol­er­ate what he de­scribed as the Gov­ern­ment’s align­ment with the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He said the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s his­toric vic­to­ry, which saw Re­pub­li­cans lose con­trol of both cham­bers of Con­gress, should prompt peo­ple in T&T to ex­am­ine the coun­try’s own po­lit­i­cal choic­es and the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent for­eign pol­i­cy de­ci­sions.

“From the Op­po­si­tion, the UNC reached out of our lane and open­ly at­tacked and in­sult­ed the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship of our neigh­bour and ma­jor trad­ing part­ner to the north. In Gov­ern­ment, they ex­pressed open sup­port for the vile racism, mil­i­tary bul­ly­ing, cor­rup­tion and cru­el­ty which were the ‘poli­cies’ of an ad­min­is­tra­tion there. From the be­gin­ning, the UNC used our coun­try to spawn Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca to in­fil­trate and vi­o­late our dig­ni­ty and sov­er­eign­ty in or­der to win elec­tions here.”

Row­ley main­tained that T&T did not have to com­pro­mise its prin­ci­ples to main­tain good re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States.

“What should be clear to us here is that we did not need to sell our souls to any­one in Wash­ing­ton to have friends in au­thor­i­ty there. All we need­ed to do was what the PNM did - have re­spect for our­selves and those whom we in­ter­act with and stand firm­ly on our prin­ci­ples of de­cen­cy, in­tegri­ty, dig­ni­ty and hu­man­i­ty and we be friends to all and vas­sals of none.”

Beck­les con­grat­u­lates Jef­fries

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les con­grat­u­lat­ed the De­moc­rats on their vic­to­ry, de­scrib­ing the out­come as a re­minder of the pow­er of the elec­torate to change the di­rec­tion of a coun­try.

“This elec­tion rep­re­sents more than a shift in po­lit­i­cal pow­er. It’s a re­minder of a fun­da­men­tal de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ple: the peo­ple have the pow­er to change the di­rec­tion of their coun­try,” she said.

She al­so wel­comed Ha­keem Jef­fries’ ap­point­ment as Speak­er of the House-des­ig­nate.

‘Kam­la a Trump

dis­ci­ple’—Browne

For­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne al­so weighed in on the elec­tion re­sults, say­ing he hoped they would prompt Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to bet­ter un­der­stand the US sys­tem of gov­er­nance.

He ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of “go­ing to great lengths to be seen as a dis­ci­ple of Trump’s ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ ap­proach to pol­i­tics.”

“She’s adopt­ed an ag­gres­sive, bel­liger­ent, and high­ly di­vi­sive lead­er­ship ethos which has fea­tured fre­quent use of eth­nic slurs and racist ref­er­ences. The Prime Min­is­ter has gone out of her way to heap in­ces­sant praise and adu­la­tion on ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings with­in our re­gion, which will cer­tain­ly come un­der ad­di­tion­al scruti­ny and ex­am­i­na­tion with the in­ves­ti­ga­tions and hear­ings that shall oc­cur over the next two years. She’s lied about the pur­pose of a mil­i­tary radar which was placed in To­ba­go at the clear be­hest of Trump emis­saries...That too is like­ly to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.”

Browne fur­ther ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of pri­ori­tis­ing its re­la­tion­ship with Wash­ing­ton over T&T’s sov­er­eign in­ter­ests, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its ap­proach to Venezuela and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues such as ICC and Cu­ba.