Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Prime Min­is­ter’s in­ter­view broad­cast­ed across most ma­jor me­dia plat­forms in the coun­try on Sun­day night was de­cep­tive, hope­less, and a work of fic­tion. That’s the sen­ti­ment be­ing ex­pressed by mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion yes­ter­day.

In the 90-minute in­ter­view, Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­dressed a wide ar­ray of top­ics which were promi­nent in the pub­lic do­main over the past five years. Among the is­sues dis­cussed were crime, the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic sta­tus, the re­struc­tur­ing of state-owned Petrotrin, mar­i­jua­na de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion, and the fu­ture of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

In a re­lease, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) de­scribed Dr Row­ley’s in­ter­view as a “po­lit­i­cal cam­paign ad­ver­tise­ment” which was a “pa­thet­ic at­tempt to bol­ster his par­ty’s im­age” to which he failed to ac­com­plish.

It said the prime min­is­ter de­flect­ed on crit­i­cal na­tion­al is­sues such as un­em­ploy­ment and the state of the econ­o­my while “of­fer­ing no so­lu­tions, poli­cies or ini­tia­tives to im­prove our cir­cum­stances”.

The par­ty dis­put­ed his claims of hav­ing avert­ed eco­nom­ic col­lapse as “a work of fic­tion” cit­ing that over 60,000 cit­i­zens lost their jobs dur­ing his tenure. It al­so cit­ed that the coun­try’s “rev­enues are de­clin­ing, for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment is slow­ing and busi­ness­es are clos­ing down”.

How­ev­er, the par­ty took a spe­cial in­ter­est in the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­fence of spend­ing mil­lions of tax-pay­er dol­lars on restora­tion projects dur­ing a time when it said: “Our health sys­tem is in cri­sis, sev­er­al schools re­main closed or in­com­plete, and crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture needs such as roads and drains are ne­glect­ed”.

“While we rec­og­nize the im­por­tance of pre­serv­ing our na­tion­al her­itage, our view is that ad­dress­ing the crit­i­cal needs of the peo­ple should be pri­or­i­tized,” the re­lease read.

UNC Chief Whip David Lee de­scribed Dr Row­ley’s claims that he “has put the en­er­gy sec­tor in a much bet­ter place than it was in 2015” as delu­sion­al as he cit­ed the 40 per cent un­em­ploy­ment rate with­in the sec­tor. He al­so cit­ed me­dia re­ports that Ti­tan Methanol may be shut­ting down its plant due to dif­fi­cul­ties with nat­ur­al gas ne­go­ti­a­tions.