Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley has warned that Sa­tan has an in­cli­na­tion to quote scrip­ture from the Bible to suit his pur­pos­es.

He not­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's use of Bib­li­cal scrip­ture as a tool in the grow­ing tiff be­tween the two, ap­peared to down­play con­cerns about cor­rupt prac­tices at the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott). Row­ley added that con­cerns to a Prime Min­is­ter from one of his Cab­i­net min­is­ters about cor­rup­tion at a State-owned com­pa­ny should not be shot down re­gard­less of the be­hav­iour of the min­is­ter. "These are pub­lic sec­tor is­sues. It has noth­ing to my do with my be­hav­iour in Cab­i­net. I was re­port­ing on Ude­cott when I was min­is­ter for Ude­cott," Row­ley said. He stressed that the prime min­is­ter failed to re­fute al­le­ga­tions that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment gave the gov­ern­ment of T&T a loan of US$100 mil­lion to win over a mul­ti-mil­lion con­tract for the con­struc­tion of the Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts in Port-of-Spain. "The Prime Min­is­ter spent all his time (in the de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day) try­ing to psy­cho­analyse me. He re­spond­ed to none, not a sin­gle one of the sub­stan­tive is­sues that I raised with re­spect to the con­duct of State busi­ness," Row­ley said.

"The Prime Min­is­ter spoke at length to­day about my al­leged con­di­tion (of im­prop­er be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice) but he nev­er ad­dressed that is­sue of bid-rig­ging at Ude­cott. No re­sponse, no de­nial. It is clear from the Prime Min­is­ter's pre­sen­ta­tion that they are not ac­cept­ing any crit­i­cisms of Ude­cott." He said, "I spoke about Ude­cott and the ev­i­dence be­fore the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry, much of which was not known to us be­fore the in­quiry." A well-com­posed Row­ley said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day af­ter­noon out­side the Par­lia­men­tary Cham­ber of the Red House that Man­ning tried to dis­miss the al­le­ga­tions raised about Ude­cott through the launch of a char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion on him. "If one thing can be said for the Prime Min­is­ter, it is that he is con­sis­tent. He has been con­sis­tent­ly try­ing to por­tray me in a cer­tain way. To­day is no dif­fer­ent. Clear­ly, the in­ten­tion was to por­tray me in the eyes of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty as some­one who lacks self con­trol," Row­ley said.