Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

For the first time since his res­ig­na­tion as prime min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley has bro­ken his si­lence—ad­dress­ing the na­tion not as head of gov­ern­ment, but as po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

In a fiery re­turn to the stage at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at the Croisee, San Juan, Dr Row­ley de­fend­ed his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s strate­gic ef­forts in the en­er­gy sec­tor, ac­cus­ing the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) of sab­o­tag­ing key na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment projects for po­lit­i­cal gain.

Dr Row­ley fo­cused heav­i­ly on the Drag­on gas and Lo­ran-Man­a­tee fields—both crit­i­cal to T&T’s en­er­gy fu­ture. He blast­ed the UNC for what he called “bla­tant hypocrisy” on the Drag­on gas project.

“All of a sud­den when they think the Drag­on project is dead, they’re sup­port­ing it. When it was alive, they’re try­ing to kill it,” he de­clared. “They were call­ing for sanc­tions against us. But now, con­ve­nient­ly, they’re sup­port­ing the Drag­on gas field.”

The Drag­on field, lo­cat­ed off­shore Venezuela, holds an es­ti­mat­ed 3.5 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas. But Dr Row­ley em­pha­sised that an even big­ger prize lies in the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee project—joint­ly owned by T&T and Venezuela, and hold­ing a mas­sive ten tril­lion cu­bic feet of gas.

“The big­ger fish be­ing fried now is Man­a­tee,” he said. “This PNM Gov­ern­ment has been able to get the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment to agree to have Shell act on our be­half to move for­ward with this joint de­vel­op­ment.”

He warned that the UNC’s con­tin­ued an­tag­o­nism to­ward Venezuela could jeop­ar­dise this land­mark arrange­ment.

“If the UNC keeps in­sult­ing the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple, and turn­ing their back on trade with Venezuela, can’t you see how that threat­ens the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee project? Venezuela owns 73 per cent of it—called Lo­ran—and we own 27 per cent, Man­a­tee.”

Dr Row­ley ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of un­der­min­ing na­tion­al in­ter­est for short-term po­lit­i­cal gain.

“Will you al­low Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Wade Mark, and that bunch of klep­to­crat­ic mis­fits to de­stroy the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go ac­cess­ing Venezue­lan gas to strength­en our rev­enues—just be­cause Kam­la wants to win some­thing?”

He added, “I’ve beat­en her once, I’ve beat­en her twice, I’ve beat­en her nine times—and in 2025, the PNM is go­ing to beat her again.”

Dr Row­ley turned his at­ten­tion to the re­cent cor­rup­tion in­sin­u­a­tions made by out­go­ing UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein, call­ing them “ridicu­lous” and part of a larg­er dis­trac­tion cam­paign ahead of the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Ad­dress­ing sup­port­ers at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter ref­er­enced a UNC press con­fer­ence ear­li­er Fri­day, dur­ing which the Op­po­si­tion ques­tioned the sale of a ve­hi­cle pre­vi­ous­ly owned by Dr Row­ley to a con­trac­tor al­leged­ly linked to gov­ern­ment projects.

“They are flood­ing the zone with fool­ish­ness,” Row­ley said. “They called a press con­fer­ence to­day not to ad­dress pol­i­cy is­sues—like how they plan to cut tax­es but spend more—but to talk about a car I sold years ago.

“Tonight, I want to tell that lit­tle walk and wine twit—there’s a big dif­fer­ence be­tween sell­ing a car and thiev­ing a car. I am ready, will­ing and able to deal with the DPP and any­body else for any­thing I sell. I’m afraid they can’t say the same.”

Row­ley not­ed the in­fa­mous Sec­tion 34 in­ci­dent. “Imag­ine be­ing ac­cused of cor­rup­tion by the same UNC that changed the law in Par­lia­ment to pro­tect Steve Fer­gu­son—then pro­claimed it in the mid­dle of the night and went to court the next morn­ing to get set free.”

He re­mind­ed the pub­lic that it was the PNM that re­versed those ef­forts and pur­sued the case in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, “We went to the US courts and won a $175 mil­lion USD judg­ment for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. If the UNC wins the elec­tion, they will make sure Steve Fer­gu­son doesn’t pay that mon­ey.”

Ref­er­enc­ing for­mer UNC min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, Row­ley quipped, “If I was Jack Warn­er, and they’re look­ing to jail me in the air, on the ground, un­der­ground ... I too would walk around with a UNC jer­sey.”

He con­clud­ed with a scathing cri­tique of the Op­po­si­tion’s nar­ra­tive, “Since when has shame died in this coun­try? They have no shame. And in try­ing to give the im­pres­sion that the Gov­ern­ment I lead is cor­rupt, they come on a plat­form hop­ing we for­get their record.”