As he bid farewell to the hun­dreds of Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment sup­port­ers and mem­bers gath­ered at City Hall, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, out­go­ing prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley dis­played a soft­er side.

It re­flect­ed one in which he had to sac­ri­fice per­son­al mat­ters for the greater good of the coun­try.

Stand­ing at the podi­um dur­ing a spe­cial con­ven­tion of the PNM, a more sub­dued Row­ley shared, “I can’t un­der­stand some­times when I think about it why peo­ple are sur­prised that I’m walk­ing away from the au­thor­i­ty of the of­fice of prime min­is­ter.

“Be­cause if you know the num­ber of painful mo­ments in there, you’d ask why the hell I didn’t go be­fore,” Row­ley said as he re­called that of­fi­cial du­ties forced him to forego the fu­ner­al of his wife’s fa­ther and the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny of his first daugh­ter.

He ex­plained that soon af­ter he got mar­ried, his wife’s fa­ther died but he was not around.

“I left my wife in Trinidad to bury her fa­ther ... and it both­ered me for the rest of my life. When my first daugh­ter grad­u­at­ed from the uni­ver­si­ty I had to miss her grad­u­a­tion be­cause they locked up Oc­c­ah (Oc­c­ah Sea­paul, for­mer House Speak­er) and there was a State of Emer­gency. As Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment, I could not go. Those of the kinds of things that stay with you for­ev­er. I have been try­ing to make it up to my wife and daugh­ter. I hope to do that now,” Row­ley said.

How­ev­er, as he switched to elec­tion mode his sig­na­ture com­mand­ing voice “made it very clear” that while he may be mov­ing away from of­fice, he was “not mov­ing away” from his com­mit­ment to T&T.

With the cheers grow­ing loud­er, Row­ley urged par­ty loy­al­ists to make the wise de­ci­sion of re-elect­ing the PNM back in­to pow­er.

“Elec­tion is due any time. All the way down to No­vem­ber, it’s due. You might even have it for Christ­mas.

“But just re­mem­ber, if we do not win the next elec­tion, all that our por­tion will be is an op­po­si­tion leader and six op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors. Every­thing else would have gone to the next gov­ern­ment. So whether you’re in URP, you’re in Cepep, you’re in Pep­si just un­der­stand that,” Row­ley urged.

He added this was not the time about “who like who and who don’t like who” as he ad­vised, “Leave all the lik­ing for your wife and your hus­band and bring com­mon sense and rea­son, fact, en­er­gy, and vi­sion to the bat­tle for po­lit­i­cal pow­er.”

As he urged the “red army” that vic­to­ry needs to be a must for the PNM, Row­ley told them that from “gov­ern­ment to op­po­si­tion” is a short jour­ney.

Fol­low­ing Row­ley’s speech, the par­ty head­ed to Wood­ford Square to present its full slate of 41 can­di­dates.

A part­ing of ways—an­a­lyst

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that Row­ley’s speech was in­deed a part­ing of ways from an in­ti­mate set­ting with par­ty of­fi­cials and faith­ful.

He not­ed Row­ley ap­pealed to the base of the par­ty in­di­cat­ing all that they have worked for in Gov­ern­ment will be gone if the PNM los­es the elec­tions be­cause in op­po­si­tion all there is “an op­po­si­tion leader and six sen­a­tors.”

Mo­hammed added the PNM al­so showed that the par­ty has closed ranks as it nor­mal­ly does in prepa­ra­tion for elec­tions.