Amid the clam­orous si­lence from his par­lia­men­tary col­leagues on who should suc­ceed him as both Prime Min­is­ter of the coun­try and po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM, Dr Kei­th Row­ley is seek­ing to ride out in­to the sun­set to, by his ad­mis­sion and not my pre­sump­tu­ous­ness, be with his fam­i­ly. He tells us that it has been 45 years now and so it is time–af­ter ty­ing up some ends, among them Cari­com mat­ters that re­quire his phys­i­cal pres­ence in Bar­ba­dos in his ca­pac­i­ty as Chair.

But there are do­mes­tic mat­ters he has cho­sen to arrange, for a con­clu­sion that is as stress free as pos­si­ble, name­ly, prime min­is­te­r­i­al suc­ces­sion, new po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of his par­ty, and screen­ing of can­di­dates for some can­di­dates.

As I write this col­umn, on Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 10, 2025, he is still Prime Min­is­ter and po­lit­i­cal leader, and there are loom­ing par­lia­men­tary elec­tions to be won. And there is a close par­tial con­clu­sion to the prob­lem of se­lec­tion of a new Prime Min­is­ter–pro­vid­ed by a pri­vate PNM par­lia­men­tary cau­cus which vot­ed, 11 to 9, and with Row­ley de­clin­ing the op­tion to vote, that Stu­art Young (the win­ner over Pen­ne­lope Beck­les) should be the undis­put­ed can­di­date for par­lia­men­tary en­dorse­ment and pres­i­den­tial ap­point­ment as Prime Min­is­ter.

And I won­der why the good­ly doc­tor has wait­ed un­til age 75 to make time for his fam­i­ly. Does he con­sid­er, for ex­am­ple, that he has enough time left to watch, mon­i­tor, and guide the growth and de­vel­op­ment of those won­der­ful grand­chil­dren? And will he be able to en­joy the mil­lions of dol­lars he has earned and ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over those too-long years?

I hope so, and I ask him to for­give my pre­sump­tu­ous­ness in some re­spects here, for the missed mo­ments with wifey, for the mag­ic of the grands, for the ease of trav­el on his own time and choice to the world’s ex­ot­ic places, and, per­haps, for the ne­ces­si­ty of writ­ing his mem­oirs.

Out­side of his pol­i­tics, which he knows I have not been im­pressed with, we’ve been good with each oth­er. He was the sec­ond of three head boys that su­per­vised me at Bish­op’s High, the oth­er two be­ing em­i­nent se­nior coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau and fel­low lan­guage stu­dent Sel­wyn Pil­grim. We be­longed to the Lit­er­ary and De­bat­ing So­ci­ety where we de­bat­ed each oth­er on the is­sues of the day with fire, en­thu­si­asm, and not a lit­tle naïveté, and if you agree with me that this man han­dles Eng­lish like a mas­ter, con­struct­ing thoughts and mes­sages with­out the ben­e­fit of flash cards and the like, then the so­ci­ety is in large mea­sure re­spon­si­ble.

We were poor in re­la­tion to what our par­ents’ mea­gre in­comes could buy, though not in terms of the fruits and pro­vi­sions pro­duced by our vil­lage grounds and rivers, but we were reared to be con­tent. So he (not me since my fa­ther was a shoe­mak­er! Heheh) some­times wore laugh­ing shoes–shoes whose soles had in part part­ed com­pa­ny with the top and so licked the ground as he walked to and fro, mak­ing him a laugh­ing stock.

One thing I shall nev­er for­get is his in­ter­ven­tion when he was a stu­dent at Mona to have pro vice-chan­cel­lor Robin­son (I think) con­tact me to ask if I was in­ter­est­ed in tak­ing a Bowles schol­ar­ship. I was, but as a post­grad­u­ate stu­dent since I al­ready had an un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree via a gov­ern­ment schol­ar­ship. The Bowles was not for grad­u­ate schol­ar­ship, how­ev­er. But Row­ley’s ef­fort was ap­pre­ci­at­ed, still is in fact.

But, as not­ed above, I didn’t care for Row­ley’s pol­i­tics. I note that he has said, in re­flec­tion on his po­lit­i­cal life, that he is es­pe­cial­ly hap­py in par­tic­u­lar with mak­ing Point Lisas the gate­way to the world for Venezuela gas, with the cross-bor­der ini­tia­tive, with the youth de­vel­op­ment plan in the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment, with his abil­i­ty to at­tract young peo­ple in­to a life in pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment, and to over­see their de­vel­op­ment there­in. I ap­plaud these ini­tia­tives, es­pe­cial­ly the lat­ter. I know the feel­ing, es­pe­cial­ly since I have been a teacher all of my adult life.

But while I ex­tend ku­dos, I de­plore his fail­ure to give To­ba­go the mod­el of au­ton­o­my the is­land has been clam­our­ing so long for. He seems to think that it is not his to give. But I dis­agree since, in the last nine years, he has been the al­pha politi­cian get­ting rel­e­vant bills de­vel­oped, pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic, dis­cussed, parked, res­ur­rect­ed, vot­ed for, and re­ject­ed. It is clear that he has been us­ing the wrong pol­i­tics.

In the mat­ter of the change of prime min­is­ter and po­lit­i­cal leader, even PNM peo­ple say he is so in­tox­i­cat­ed with pow­er that he has erred bad­ly, and one of their most damn­ing charges is that he is caus­ing them to re­sent him as he goes about per­form­ing his last rites.

Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment, and pol­i­tics in T&T and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He has al­so writ­ten thou­sands of columns for all the ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try. He can be reached at jay­win­ster@gmail.com