Sascha Wil­son

Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has chid­ed con­stituents of San Fer­nan­do East for blank­ing ac­tiv­i­ties host­ed by the par­ty's ex­ec­u­tive."You are the prob­lem," Row­ley said as he took his cam­paign for re-elec­tion to for­mer leader Patrick Man­ning's con­stituen­cy at the Pleas­antville Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Mon­day night.

Row­ley, who is seek­ing to re­tain his lead­er­ship po­si­tion in the par­ty's May 18 elec­tions, made the com­ment as he sought to dis­pel fears with­in the con­stituen­cy of vic­tim­i­sa­tion be­cause they sup­port Man­ning."I would have been very sur­prised if the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do East did not solid­ly sup­port Patrick Man­ning," said Row­ley, who has had strained re­la­tions with Man­ning since he chal­lenged Man­ning for PNM lead­er­ship in 1996.

Man­ning was not at the meet­ing.

Row­ley hailed Man­ning as an icon, say­ing that at the ap­pro­pri­ate time Man­ning's ser­vice to coun­try, par­ty and peo­ple will be ap­pro­pri­ate­ly ac­knowl­edged.He said San Fer­nan­do East has been and re­mains the front­line PNM con­stituen­cy."For those who might want to en­ter­tain thoughts of San Fer­nan­do East not be­ing treat­ed in any con­sid­er­a­tion oth­er than that, let me just ex­press my dis­ap­point­ment to San Fer­nan­do East."

How­ev­er, the po­lit­i­cal leader com­plained that when the PNM fam­i­ly day came to Skin­ner Park: "San Fer­nan­do East, our front­line, num­ber one con­stituen­cy, did not take an ac­tive part in that and I was very dis­ap­point­ed."He not­ed that in 2010, the con­stituen­cy al­so took an of­fi­cial po­si­tion not to take part in the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions. He al­so re­called that at the open­ing of the south re­gion­al of­fice, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the con­stituen­cy was sup­posed to speak, but the rep­re­sen­ta­tive blanked the event.

"So who come here to talk about who vic­tim­is­ing who and who spit­ing who? You are the prob­lem."How­ev­er, Row­ley said he was hap­py that the con­stituen­cy lead­er­ship was en­cour­ag­ing con­stituents to par­tic­i­pate in the forth­com­ing elec­tions.

Petrotrin PR on spill

Touch­ing on the ma­jor oil spill in the south-west­ern penin­su­la, Row­ley de­scribed it as the worst dis­as­ter since Hur­ri­cane Flo­ra.Row­ley, who has re­ceived Petrotrin re­ports about the oil spills from the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union, said by 8 am on De­cem­ber 17, Petrotrin had a doc­u­ment con­firm­ing that 7,453 bar­rels of oil were in the Gulf of Paria.

Ac­cus­ing Petrotrin of a cov­er-up, he said: "Petrotrin is pay­ing mil­lions of dol­lars for pub­lic re­la­tions in the pa­pers to tell you about an oil leak when the worst na­tion­al dis­as­ter since Hur­ri­cane Flo­ra took place in the south-west­ern penin­su­la."He not­ed that while seek­ing to do PR, Petrotrin did not chal­lenge the $20 mil­lion fine im­posed on it by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty for four vi­o­la­tions stem­ming from the oil spill.

"It is the same fool­ish­ness that hap­pened with Calder Hart and Ude­cott when I had to take a po­si­tion with re­spect to Tarou­ba Sta­di­um and oth­er things be­cause of a sim­ple mat­ter, when a Cab­i­net ought not to en­cour­age a state en­ter­prise to dam­age the in­ter­ests of T&T," Row­ley said.How­ev­er, he said at least Ude­cott did not poi­son any­body or threat­en to burn down half of La Brea and no­body was beg­ging for com­pen­sa­tion.

He al­so crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for not meet­ing with OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, who want­ed to al­so give her a copy of the doc­u­ments.