Chester Sam­bra­no

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was set to trav­el so he was dressed ca­su­al­ly be­fore he was roped in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al press con­fer­ence. That’s the rea­son of­fered by Sir Ronald Sanders, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Am­bas­sador Ex­tra­or­di­nary and Plenipo­ten­tiary to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (USA) and the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) who yes­ter­day came out in de­fence of Row­ley’s at­tire.

Dr Row­ley made an ap­pear­ance on stage dressed in ca­su­al wear on the fi­nal day of the Cana­da-Cari­com Sum­mit on Thurs­day along­side a very for­mal­ly dressed Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau.

Dr Row­ley re­ceived a lot of crit­i­cism on so­cial me­dia from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and oth­er lo­cals, with some even ac­cus­ing him of em­bar­rass­ing the coun­try.

How­ev­er, in a post to his Face­book page yes­ter­day, Sir Ronald of­fered clar­i­fi­ca­tion to what he called, “Re­gret­table com­ments that have been made on Face­book that do a great in­jus­tice to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, who was an out­stand­ing voice at the Cana­da-Cari­com meet­ing on the is­sues that are im­por­tant to us as a re­gion.”

Sir Ronald said he could at­test to this be­cause he sat next to Dr Row­ley at all ses­sions of the Meet­ing.

“The cir­cum­stances of his dress for a me­dia con­fer­ence with Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter, Justin Trudeau, were that the Con­fer­ence Chair, PM Sker­rit of Do­mini­ca, had to leave ear­ly be­cause of the prospect of Hur­ri­cane Tam­my hit­ting his coun­try. So he was not avail­able for the end of the con­fer­ence me­dia ap­pear­ance.

“PM Row­ley had dressed to leave the ho­tel for the mul­ti­ple air­plane jour­neys home, but in the ab­sence of PM Sker­rit, as he was leav­ing, he was pressed in­to ser­vice at the very last minute. He stepped up to the plate, and even though he was draft­ed with no pri­or no­tice, he spoke well for all. He should be laud­ed, not crit­i­cised,” he said.

Dr Row­ley did not ad­dress the mat­ter but in­stead re­post­ed Sir Ronald’s de­fence of him on his Face­book page.

On Fri­day, Pro­fes­sor of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions and co-founder of the Diplo­mat­ic Acad­e­my of the Caribbean, Andy Knight, ad­vised cit­i­zens to fo­cus on the sub­stance of the re­cent Cari­com-Cana­da Sum­mit, rather than Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s at­tire.

“I don’t see why we should be giv­ing the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go hell for wear­ing a fair­ly ca­su­al out­fit, it re­al­ly dis­tracts from the sub­stance of the meet­ing. We don’t know the cir­cum­stances un­der which the Prime Min­is­ter was forced to dress the way that he did and I don’t think it should re­al­ly mat­ter and I hope that mes­sage gets across,” Knight said.