No cab­i­net reshuf­fle!

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was quick to shut down all ru­mours of a Cab­i­net reshuf­fle dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day.

De­spite weeks of spec­u­la­tion of a po­ten­tial Cab­i­net reshuf­fle be­ing an­nounced, which in­ten­si­fied when Cab­i­net’s mem­bers went in­to a three-day re­treat this week, Row­ley said those ru­mours orig­i­nat­ed from so­cial me­dia and he would not act based on so­cial me­dia com­men­tary.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue, Row­ley said, “So­cial me­dia mean any­body, so any­body could get up and an­nounce a reshuf­fle and the me­dia comes run­ning to me ask­ing me, ‘When is the reshuf­fle?’ I re­al­ly don’t like be­ing moved by the ar­bi­trari­ness of so­cial me­dia.

“I can tell you that I gave no sig­nal to any­one... I am not a Prime Min­is­ter who will reshuf­fle to ap­pease some­one on so­cial me­dia who say­ing, ‘It’s time for a reshuf­fle.’ I rather have a min­is­ter do more with some­thing that he or she knows more about now and let’s get on with the job. “That is not to say that the oc­ca­sion may not, will not or should not arise that the Prime Min­is­ter should make changes in the Cab­i­net.”

He made it clear he was not one who thought reshuf­fles were a good thing.

“I think I may have reshuf­fled the Cab­i­net twice in the eight-year pe­ri­od and on each oc­ca­sion, they were sig­nif­i­cant moves. I have been in pub­lic life in the gov­ern­ment, I served in a num­ber of cab­i­nets, I can tell you that reshuf­fling for reshuf­fling’s sake does not im­prove­ment make. Be­cause when­ev­er you reshuf­fle the cab­i­net, rest as­sured that while some peo­ple, few peo­ple, may ac­cel­er­ate their per­for­mance, the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple have a learn­ing curve be­fore they can start run­ning again,” he added.

He said many changes in cab­i­net which oc­curred with past gov­ern­ments had been done be­cause of spe­cif­ic scan­dals that re­quired ad­just­ments.

How­ev­er, he said, his Cab­i­net on­ly fell vic­tim to that on two oc­ca­sions—the death of Franklin Khan and the ar­rest of Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, both of which were out of his con­trol.

He said Mc­Don­ald’s cur­rent court mat­ter strad­dled two gov­ern­ments be­fore his, when Patrick Man­ning was Prime Min­is­ter. He said new in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed it­self in her case while she was a mem­ber of his Cab­i­net and the po­lice took ac­tion.

Re­mind­ed of the scan­dal in for­mer Sport Min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith’s min­istry, Row­ley said, “As Prime Min­is­ter, I took ac­tion against a min­is­ter for in­ter­fer­ing with the work of a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, as that per­ma­nent sec­re­tary con­duct­ed pub­lic ser­vice busi­ness... All the ac­tions I took against Dar­ryl Smith, none of it had any­thing to do with any sex­u­al ha­rass­ment al­le­ga­tions in front of me.”

He al­so said al­though news­pa­per re­ports yes­ter­day im­pli­cat­ed him in Smith’s cur­rent le­gal bat­tle, he had noth­ing to do with it and he was seek­ing le­gal ad­vice on the mat­ter.

Pressed about calls for the re­moval of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds due to the wors­en­ing crime scourge, Row­ley replied, “The per­for­mance of the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, there are some peo­ple who are less pleased with my own per­for­mance. I could tell you one thing, there’s no min­is­ter in the Cab­i­net against whom more call is made for his re­moval than me. I un­der­stand where it comes from and where it goes, but I al­so un­der­stand the work that is be­ing done.”

He added that the el­e­ments of all min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios, in­clud­ing the is­sues sur­round­ing the re­quire­ments of Hinds’ port­fo­lio, suc­cess­es and fail­ures and things to be done, were dis­cussed dur­ing the re­treat.

High lev­el of vi­o­lent crimes

PM Row­ley said of 50 top­ics dis­cussed at the three-day re­treat, crime was one of them.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing along­side the Unit­ed States to tack­le il­le­gal firearms.

Asked how the Gov­ern­ment planned to deal with vi­o­lent crimes in the wake of re­cent in­ci­dents where even fam­i­ly mem­bers were killing each oth­er, he said the coun­try was sim­ply a vi­o­lent one.

Ad­dress­ing the mur­der of a woman by her cousin, he said, “Some of those crimes that make the news and help us to be trau­ma­tised, you have to un­der­stand that un­til they hap­pen, we don’t know that they’re go­ing to hap­pen... Do you think any­one in the coun­try an­tic­i­pat­ed that? Do you think that fam­i­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed that? I am sor­ry to say it but when that hap­pens, we have to come to the con­clu­sion that we are a vi­o­lent so­ci­ety. Could that not have been avoid­ed?

“Every killing you see that you have to cov­er in me­dia, it might be a mur­der­er out there, com­mit­ting more than one mur­der, but he or she is some­body’s son or daugh­ter, is some­body’s broth­er, is some­body’s hus­band, is some­body’s boyfriend, is some­body’s neigh­bour. They didn’t come from Mars, so when we keep talk­ing about the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, we’re miss­ing a huge bulls­eye. Could it not have been a sim­ple quar­rel in the fam­i­ly re­sult­ed in some­body killed with a com­pass?

“So as the killing items be­come more ef­fi­cient like the guns that are used now, the as­sault weapons, where you kill in two and fours and six­es, this killing is not a min­is­te­r­i­al thing. Our job is to try and pre­vent those killing tools from be­ing avail­able and from giv­ing peo­ple op­tions.”