Rowley accuses PM of racial hypocrisy

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of hypocrisy, claim­ing that while she now con­demns racial at­tacks and big­otry, she pre­vi­ous­ly di­rect­ed sim­i­lar re­marks at him when she was Op­po­si­tion Leader.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Row­ley said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent com­plaints about racist rhetoric rang hol­low be­cause she had once re­ferred to him as “an Oreo in the ser­vice of the one per cent.”

“Sur­prise! The Prime Min­is­ter thought that big­otry and racist re­marks were re­served on­ly for her use,” Row­ley said.

He ques­tioned whether Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­lieved such re­marks were her “birthright” while now seek­ing to por­tray her­self as a vic­tim of racial at­tacks.

The for­mer prime min­is­ter al­so launched a wide-rang­ing at­tack on the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the State of Emer­gency and the now-col­lapsed pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion case in­volv­ing busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve.

He de­scribed the ad­min­is­tra­tion as “spite­ful, vin­dic­tive and in­com­pe­tent in the ex­treme,” ar­gu­ing that it had spent the past month abus­ing the ma­chin­ery of the State to pur­sue per­son­al and po­lit­i­cal vendet­tas be­fore be­ing em­bar­rassed by the out­come of the le­gal pro­ceed­ings.

Row­ley claimed the Gov­ern­ment had at­tempt­ed to push back against the rea­son­ing of the Court of Ap­peal be­fore ul­ti­mate­ly suf­fer­ing what he de­scribed as an em­bar­rass­ing col­lapse be­fore the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil.

He ar­gued that the ad­min­is­tra­tion had failed to jus­ti­fy the de­ten­tion of cit­i­zens with­out charge and ques­tioned the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­cent ref­er­ences to “for­eign ju­ris­dic­tions.”

“What is the Prime Min­is­ter say­ing, that she and her gov­ern­ment for one whole month have been on the at­tack with­out ev­i­dence and could not lay a charge or de­fend their po­si­tion of jail­ing peo­ple with­out charge in our coun­try?” Row­ley asked.

He al­so ques­tioned whether the Gov­ern­ment was re­ly­ing on un­named for­eign au­thor­i­ties af­ter fail­ing to sub­stan­ti­ate its ac­tions lo­cal­ly.

Row­ley main­tained that if the Gov­ern­ment pos­sessed ev­i­dence of crim­i­nal con­duct against any cit­i­zen, it should pur­sue the mat­ter through the courts in ac­cor­dance with the law rather than mak­ing pub­lic al­le­ga­tions or re­fer­ring to for­eign ju­ris­dic­tions.

Call­ing for an end to the State of Emer­gency, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment had lost any moral au­thor­i­ty to con­tin­ue ex­er­cis­ing the ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers grant­ed un­der the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions.

He al­so called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to dis­miss both Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, ar­gu­ing that do­ing so was nec­es­sary if she hoped to re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence.

Row­ley fur­ther dis­missed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent state­ment that the Unit­ed States was now as­sist­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in the fight against crime, say­ing such co­op­er­a­tion had ex­ist­ed for decades.

He al­so crit­i­cised the le­gal costs aris­ing from the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the mat­ter, say­ing tax­pay­ers should not be foot­ing the bill for what he char­ac­terised as the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s mis­takes.

PM fires back at Row­ley

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has strong­ly de­fend­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, re­ject­ing calls by for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for both men to be dis­missed and for the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) to be lift­ed.

In a re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment’s an­ti-crime strat­e­gy was pro­duc­ing mea­sur­able re­sults, claim­ing that crime had fall­en sig­nif­i­cant­ly since the ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice.

“Un­der Min­is­ter Alexan­der and AG Je­re­mie there have been 400 less mur­ders in the last 15 months than were pro­ject­ed to oc­cur based on the rates un­der the PNM,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so claimed that “se­ri­ous crimes are al­so down 15 per cent this year,” adding that “PNM strong­holds have seen the largest de­creas­es in mur­ders and se­ri­ous crimes over the last 15 months due to the work of the UNC and pro­tec­tive ser­vices.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­trast­ed those fig­ures with the PNM’s decade in of­fice, say­ing, “Over 5,000 cit­i­zens were mur­dered, 8,000 were raped or sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed and over 120,000 se­ri­ous crimes oc­curred over his term in gov­ern­ment.”

She fur­ther claimed that the coun­try record­ed “the high­est mur­der rates over mul­ti­ple years” un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion and al­leged that “the ma­jor­i­ty of mur­der vic­tims [were] young Afro men killed in gang vi­o­lence in PNM strong­holds.”

“His gov­ern­ment did noth­ing to help these com­mu­ni­ties far less the rest of the coun­try,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused Row­ley of fail­ing to pro­tect the coun­try dur­ing his tenure be­fore crit­i­cis­ing his re­cent com­ments.

“Row­ley failed to pro­tect this coun­try and most egre­gious­ly failed to pro­tect the PNM’s own strong­holds from vi­o­lent crime but is now an­gry that a ‘stink­ing coo*ie’ as his sup­port­ers call me is do­ing the job he nev­er cared to do,” she said.

She al­so de­fend­ed the con­tin­u­a­tion of the State of Emer­gency, in­sist­ing, “Law-abid­ing cit­i­zens are ful­ly sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment in our fight against crime as they know that law-abid­ing cit­i­zens have ab­solute­ly noth­ing to fear.”

The PM added, “If he wants to end the SoE and fire Min­is­ter Alexan­der and AG Je­re­mie, he can go ahead and do it. I don’t know how he will do it, but some­one should ex­plain to him that he is no longer prime min­is­ter and has be­come what he al­ways com­plained about, a Face­book troll.”