Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk

On the eve of his 75th birth­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley gave his strongest state­ment on whether it would be his last year of elec­toral pol­i­tics in Par­lia­ment last week.

“I am now in my tenth year as Prime Min­is­ter. I too may be a swan. As long as I could leave here, hav­ing done the best for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, it doesn’t mat­ter when I leave,” Dr Row­ley said, re­fer­ring to a sim­i­lar state­ment by UNC MP Rush­ton Paray while he made his con­tri­bu­tion.

Turn­ing to Bridgid An­nisette-George in Par­lia­ment a short while lat­er on Fri­day, the PM said, “It was a plea­sure work­ing with you as par­lia­men­tary speak­er. I don’t know how much longer I would have in this Par­lia­ment. But I have done my du­ty, and I kept the course. I have run the race, and I look for­ward not for a pot of gold but for my fam­i­ly at the end of this rain­bow.”

It’s not the first time Dr Row­ley sig­nalled that he was bow­ing out of the po­lit­i­cal are­na—in Jan­u­ary of this year, Dr Row­ley had plant­ed the seed of pos­si­bly re­tir­ing from pol­i­tics.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get de­bate last Thurs­day, he went fur­ther and told the House, “I don’t have a lot more time in here.”

One day af­ter Dr Row­ley’s con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment, PNM’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Fos­ter Cum­mings, is­sued a press re­lease stat­ing that the par­ty’s 51st an­nu­al con­ven­tion and in­ter­nal elec­tions, sched­uled for No­vem­ber 17, had been can­celled.

Sev­er­al names have been thrown out as po­ten­tial can­di­dates in the lead­er­ship race. Among the names be­ing bandied about in­side the par­ty for lead­er­ship are Stu­art Young, SC, Pene­lope Beck­les, Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne, and Cum­mings. In his bud­get con­tri­bu­tion, Browne told the House that he would not rule out run­ning for a seat in Par­lia­ment again.

But even as Dr Row­ley's state­ments have spot­light­ed po­ten­tial can­di­dates in the par­ty for lead­er­ship af­ter his ex­it, ac­cord­ing to gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, there is no va­can­cy for the post of po­lit­i­cal leader or Prime Min­is­ter right now.

Dr Row­ley has been hint­ing at ex­it­ing. At the PNM’s par­ty con­fer­ences held in Ju­ly and Au­gus he ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the crop of young peo­ple who he had brought in­to the elec­toral fold for the par­ty.

One of the ma­jor shifts in the past few months was in ap­point­ing Young to act as PM as op­posed to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who did so for the past nine years of the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In her bud­get re­sponse, the Op­po­si­tion Leader la­belled Young as “the cho­sen one.”

For­mer PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford told the Sun­day Guardian, “From what I gath­er and how I know the par­ty op­er­ates, noth­ing will hap­pen un­til some­thing of­fi­cial­ly hap­pens.”

So far, Ford said, there has been no of­fi­cial word of Row­ley mak­ing his ex­it from the par­ty or pol­i­tics.

“Noth­ing of the sort is in place. Noth­ing. Every­thing will con­tin­ue as nor­mal,” said Ford, who once served as Ari­ma may­or and MP.

And while Dr Row­ley has been busy at work the past three weeks, as well as ad­dress­ing and com­ment­ing on na­tion­al is­sues, he has re­fused to com­ment or be drawn out to com­ment on his health af­ter a re­cent check-up abroad.

Ford re­called that the founder and then PNM leader, Dr Er­ic Williams, at a Feb­ru­ary 1981 con­ven­tion gave a “swan song the same way, and it did not mean that he was leav­ing the par­ty then.”

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Williams died the fol­low­ing month, and George Cham­bers be­came PM and po­lit­i­cal leader.

“In Dr Row­ley’s case, as far as we know, he is very healthy,” Ford said.

But the PM said when he makes his ex­it, he would do so “with his head held high” and be proud to say that he served with cer­tain peo­ple.

“And I hope that I don’t have to say if you want to find them, you have to look where the av­er­age cit­i­zen doesn’t live.”

In Ford’s view, Row­ley’s state­ment in Par­lia­ment was done to doc­u­ment his con­tri­bu­tion on record. While the pop­u­la­tion has a keen in­ter­est in the PNM and its op­er­a­tion, Ford said, “As for now, we all sup­port the Prime Min­is­ter.”

Ford said Row­ley was card­ed to ad­dress par­ty sup­port­ers at the PNM’s up­com­ing con­ven­tion, stat­ing that “so we would have to wait” to hear what he says.

Seek­ing an­swers

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Symon De No­bri­ga said the Prime Min­is­ter has a 24/7 job, and there can be and will be no dis­trac­tions from the job at hand. He ex­pressed con­fi­dence in Dr Row­ley.

“There is no lead­er­ship race in the PNM.”

Ka­reem Mar­celle told Guardian Me­dia, “In my hum­ble opin­ion, the Hon Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment may have been tak­en out of con­text by some. Dr Row­ley is a states­man who has prop­er re­spect for democ­ra­cy. Dr Row­ley’s sec­ond term of of­fice as PM con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly comes to an end in 2025, and the coun­try will have an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­cide whether they wish to re­new that man­date.

“There is no va­can­cy for po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM. That post is com­pe­tent­ly filled by a leader phe­nom­e­nal, Dr Kei­th Row­ley. Un­der his tenure, the PNM has been thriv­ing. Dr Row­ley has kept our par­ty unit­ed, and our democ­ra­cy alive and cre­at­ed un­prece­dent­ed av­enues for young peo­ple to grow in our par­ty and Gov­ern­ment,” he said.

“I can­not think of one oth­er per­son in Trinidad and To­ba­go who could’ve led this coun­try back to sta­bil­i­ty and progress over the last decade as Prime Min­is­ter than Dr Row­ley.”

Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Has­sel Bac­chus opt­ed not to re­spond in de­tail to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions giv­en that “they seem to orig­i­nate from a par­tic­u­lar in­ter­pre­ta­tion of his com­ments.”

He added, “I am sure you are well aware that tenure in the Par­lia­ment is de­pen­dent on many fac­tors. I cer­tain­ly will at­tempt to spec­u­late as to any par­tic­u­lar in­ter­pre­ta­tion of his state­ment and cer­tain­ly will not ven­ture to an­swer the ques­tions posed in that con­text.

“What is cer­tain is that Dr Row­ley is the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM.”

On Dr Row­ley’s com­ments, Sen­a­tor Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal said, “Change is in­evitable. And the PNM is an in­sti­tu­tion. I will start there. Change in lead­er­ship is NOT new to the PNM. We tran­si­tioned from the lead­er­ship of Dr Williams to Mr George Cham­bers to Mr Patrick Man­ning and now to Dr Row­ley.

“At every tran­si­tion, the par­ty would have no doubt ex­pe­ri­enced the con­se­quences of that change in lead­er­ship, as peo­ple are dif­fer­ent and their style of lead­er­ship is no doubt dif­fer­ent and was dif­fer­ent. But every PNM leader re­mained loy­al to the tenets of the par­ty. Each leader re­mained loy­al to the con­sti­tu­tion and val­ues of the par­ty be­cause the PNM is an in­sti­tu­tion with struc­ture and or­gan­i­sa­tion. And as a re­sult, we have been able to suc­cess­ful­ly tran­si­tion when our lead­ers changed.

“For while per­son­al­i­ties, styles of lead­er­ship, etc, may have been dif­fer­ent, each po­lit­i­cal leader, I be­lieve, has been loy­al to the val­ues of the par­ty (a move­ment of all the peo­ple for the peo­ple) and as a re­sult, the par­ty has sur­vived. Ap­ply this if there is a change in lead­er­ship. Re­gard­less, we will sur­vive and be­come stronger.”

She ob­served that the lead­er­ship of the par­ty is not just for the spot of po­lit­i­cal leader.

“There are var­i­ous ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship po­si­tions of the par­ty. To name a few are La­dy vice Chair, Deputy Chair­man, PRO, SMO, the list goes on. And there will soon be an in­ter­nal elec­tion for those po­si­tions,” she said.

Asked whether the par­ty be­lieves Dr Row­ley is fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, she said, “On­ly the PM can an­swer that ques­tion. But I trust what­ev­er he does will al­ways be with the best in­ten­tions for Trinidad and To­ba­go.”