Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis and To­ba­go East MP Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy have laud­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s lead­er­ship fol­low­ing his de­ci­sion to bow out of pol­i­tics end­ing his 45-year po­lit­i­cal ca­reer.

Speak­ing af­ter the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s screen­ing for can­di­dates on Sat­ur­day night at the Calder Hall Mul­ti­pur­pose Fa­cil­i­ty, Cud­joe-Lewis, who got unan­i­mous sup­port from the 33 par­ty groups in To­ba­go West, de­scribed Row­ley’s ser­vice as re­mark­able.

She spoke of his ded­i­ca­tion to strength­en­ing the coun­try’s foun­da­tion and cred­it­ed him for men­tor­ing her po­lit­i­cal jour­ney, start­ing at age 28.

“I think he has done the work and he has taught us well and pro­vid­ed good guid­ance and di­rec­tion for us and now he’s hand­ing over the ba­ton for us to con­tin­ue to run the dis­tance and put the busi­ness of state first,” Cud­joe-Lewis said.

“I have learned a lot un­der his lead­er­ship, and I’ve been priv­i­leged to have been a part of his fam­i­ly over the last 14 years. I’ve seen Dr Row­ley trans­formed PNM, to­day we have one man, one vote.”

Web­ster-Roy, who al­so emerged as the lone can­di­date for the par­ty in the To­ba­go East con­stituen­cy, said she ad­mired Dr Row­ley’s de­ci­sion to step down, call­ing it coura­geous and time­ly, as it al­lows him to fo­cus on fam­i­ly while paving the way for the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers.

“It takes a brave man, a brave leader to ex­it at a time where you’re not be­ing forced out, when you didn’t lose an elec­tion, mak­ing a brave, bold de­ci­sion to step in­to the fu­ture, em­brace your fam­i­ly life now and al­low a young gen­er­a­tion of per­sons you would have led and cham­pi­on the trans­for­ma­tion and de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Both MPs said they were con­fi­dent go­ing in­to this year’s elec­tion and are com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing Row­ley’s lega­cy of putting the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment first.