PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

“Thank you for your prayers and your sup­port.”

This was Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s mes­sage as he ad­dressed the con­gre­ga­tion of the Di­vine Des­tiny Wor­ship Cen­tre in Diego Mar­tin yes­ter­day, pri­or to to­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“Yes­ter­day it was very preva­lent when I went about on a mo­tor­cade, so many peo­ple yes­ter­day. I was out for about nine or ten hours yes­ter­day, just out in a mo­tor­cade meet­ing peo­ple, see­ing peo­ple, and greet­ing peo­ple. And so many peo­ple would stretch out and reach out and say I have been pray­ing for you. I’m still pray­ing you, I’m pray­ing for you,” said Row­ley as he ad­dressed the church ser­vice.

“This morn­ing I want to say to all of you es­pe­cial­ly those of you at Di­vine Cen­tre and Di­vine Cen­tre around fol­low­ing us, thank for hav­ing prayed for me. Thank you for hav­ing prayed for this coun­try and con­tin­ue to pray for us and pray for Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Dur­ing the ad­dress at the church ser­vice, the Prime Min­is­ter re­flect­ed up­on his tenure, which he not­ed had been punc­tu­at­ed with many un­planned dif­fi­cul­ties. Some of which he ad­mit­ted had brought him many days and night of stress.

“This is a pe­ri­od that we ex­pe­ri­enced all kinds of things that we have not planned for. We didn’t plan to be in se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty. We didn’t re­al­ly plan to be af­fect­ed by the caus­es of the ac­tions we had to take to get out of those dif­fi­cul­ties. We didn’t plan for a Venezue­lan in­va­sion, we didn’t plan for a pan­dem­ic. But those were the things that ex­er­cised us dur­ing that pe­ri­od and thank God we’ve come out of it alive,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

He said, how­ev­er, as his five-year term came to an end, he felt “light.”

“To­day I have come to the end of the term that you have giv­en me, and I feel par­tic­u­lar­ly light. Be­cause dur­ing the pe­ri­od that I have served as your Prime Min­is­ter, for that five-year term that ends to­day, there were very many days and weeks of stress. Of not be­ing sure how things are go­ing to work out. But I gen­uine­ly be­lieve that if you ap­proach it with the view of hav­ing it work out right and the faith, be­cause we are peo­ple of faith, with the faith that we will be al­right then we will not be aban­doned. Thank­ful­ly we are not aban­doned be­cause we are nev­er alone,” he said.

Dr Row­ley was elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2015, and is seek­ing re-elec­tion in to­day’s elec­tion.