Com­ing strong off his land­slide vic­to­ry at the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) first one-man-one-vote in­ter­nal elec­tions last Sun­day, re-elect­ed par­ty leader and Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ac­cept­ed that his slate could form the next gov­ern­ment of T&T.In an in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian se­nior re­porter RENU­KA SINGH, at Bal­isi­er House on Wednes­day, Row­ley put this lat­est vic­to­ry in­to con­text, and talks about his open-arms pol­i­cy to­wards all races, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a PNM coali­tion in the fu­ture.

Q: In the last 24 months, there have been sev­er­al calls made by you for the Gov­ern­ment to call an ear­ly elec­tion. Is the PNM ready for a pos­si­ble snap elec­tion?

A: The PNM is as ready as we can be and we get read­ier every day. If an elec­tion is called now, we will be able to con­test it and with every pass­ing day we get bet­ter pre­pared. We are not un­mind­ful of the fact that we have to be ready as an al­ter­na­tive to this Gov­ern­ment.

So you al­ready have in your mind or have al­ready start­ed plan­ning what your Cab­i­net would look like, what your min­istries would look like?

(Dr Row­ley leaned back on the chair and in­ter­twined his fin­gers over his ab­domen be­fore re­spond­ing) Well, we have a very good idea of many of the (pause) Cab­i­net struc­tures that we'd put in place.You would have heard me talk about the Pub­lic Ser­vice and a small­er Cab­i­net ...(pause)...we have done a lot of re­view of pol­i­cy and where these poli­cies would be ex­e­cut­ed.

What this Gov­ern­ment has done is to, um, ex­plode the num­ber of min­istries. The ef­fect of that has been to make the Pub­lic Ser­vice very dys­func­tion­al and splin­tered, and against my stat­ed pol­i­cy for a small­er Cab­i­net.Things that are min­istries on their own would be part of an­oth­er min­istry. Doesn't mean that those func­tions would not be dis­charged. For ex­am­ple, the peo­ple who are now un­der the um­brel­la of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment as a min­istry, they would be un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance, right? So you have one Cab­i­net po­si­tion.

Re­mem­ber, the min­istry is a fund­ed agency. Same thing with the Min­istry for To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment, that is a po­lit­i­cal con­ve­nience to give the TOP (To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion for the Peo­ple) Del­mon Bak­er a job. What he is do­ing there is THA (To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly) work.It doesn't mean that those peo­ple or those as­sign­ments are not go­ing to be car­ried out.I heard the Prime Min­is­ter talk­ing about send­ing home pub­lic ser­vants. That is not the is­sue. The is­sue is the man­age­ment struc­ture.

For ex­am­ple, the cre­ation of the min­istry for Gan­ga Singh (En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources) to award more con­tracts through WASA. I mean, a Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties...is that the voice of the Cab­i­net? You don't need to have five peo­ple in the five splin­ters and each one has a ded­i­cat­ed per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, and a lay­er of bu­reau­cra­cy, which is ex­pen­sive–and that is where the prob­lem aris­es in the cur­rent arrange­ment, and we would clean that up by hav­ing a prop­er struc­ture.

So Cab­i­net po­si­tions...and so they come lat­er on...but the Pub­lic Ser­vice ori­en­ta­tion, we are in very fruit­ful and in­tense dis­cus­sions about that, un­der­stand­ing what we would like to see at the Gov­ern­ment.

Right now, the Gov­ern­ment is an amor­phous crea­ture, nei­ther fish nor fowl, but what comes out of it is un­ac­cept­able. That un­ac­cept­abil­i­ty is wide­ly known to the pop­u­la­tion and we want to bring that back, so that you can have Cab­i­net con­trol, Cab­i­net-led re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, prop­er con­duct, led by a Prime Min­is­ter for whom the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter is not a play­ground.

Four years ago, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, that coali­tion, seemed to have ben­e­fit­ed from a lot of an­ti-Man­ning sen­ti­ment. Do you think that any an­ti-PP sen­ti­ment now is work­ing to your ad­van­tage?

Well, in every sit­u­a­tion there is com­pe­ti­tion be­tween those in of­fice and those out­side of of­fice. What goes on with those in of­fice must have an im­pact on those on the out­side. Be­cause if the pop­u­la­tion is sat­is­fied by what's go­ing on in of­fice, then those who are out­side would be seen as not quite ready for the change.On the oth­er hand, if what's in­side is not sat­is­fac­to­ry, then the pop­u­la­tion will look out­side to see what's avail­able and will choose.

We are con­fi­dent that this dis­as­ter which is the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment has so dam­aged the psy­che, the prospects and the po­ten­tial of the peo­ple of T&T that they will look to the PNM to im­prove their sit­u­a­tion, and that's why we are prepar­ing our poli­cies, our per­son­nel to be able to de­liv­er on that promise.

Are you pre­pared for what can be the weight of the pub­lic's col­lec­tive need for re­cov­ery by next year?

Well, the an­swer is yes, be­cause the job de­scrip­tion car­ries it. The Prime Min­is­ter of T&T has a job de­scrip­tion, and I un­der­stand it ful­ly well. I have been around for a long time, I have been in the Op­po­si­tion for a long time, I have been in the Cab­i­net for a long time, and I un­der­stand what is re­quired. So I am not go­ing in­to this like many peo­ple in Gov­ern­ment to­day, who saw a bat­tle of elec­tions and cre­at­ed a vac­u­um.

They were drink­ing a rounds in a bar and they de­cid­ed to run for elec­tions and said, "I'm go­ing to be­come a min­is­ter" and now find them­selves com­plete­ly out of their depth.For­tu­nate­ly for me, and for the par­ty, and for the coun­try, me and some of my col­leagues have had the ex­pe­ri­ence of serv­ing in and out of gov­ern­ment. So we bring to the peo­ple of T&T the val­ue of that ex­pe­ri­ence.

Right af­ter the [PNM in­ter­nal] elec­tions–I don't know if the count has been fi­nalised, but the Prime Min­is­ter said it may not have been much of a vic­to­ry be­cause there was a 17 per cent vot­er turnout. What are your thoughts on that?

I think the Prime Min­is­ter keeps em­bar­rass­ing her­self. She has be­come the mouth­piece of her han­dlers, and she has been re­duced to be­ing a pup­pet of her spin doc­tors (long pause).

She should have known that that is not a se­ri­ous state­ment, and she knows that be­cause when she was elect­ed as the leader of the UNC (Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress), a par­ty which claims to have the same mem­ber­ship or larg­er than the PNM, she got less than 13,000 votes–12,000 and some­thing–she got less than 13,000 votes. No­body, no min­is­ter or her han­dlers now, made an is­sue of how many votes she got, they ac­cept­ed her vic­to­ry as phe­nom­e­nal, and they la­belled it Kam­la-ma­nia.

I have been elect­ed in a sim­i­lar cir­cum­stance, on our first time out in a one-man-one-vote, with 18,000-plus votes, and she is tak­ing is­sue with my elec­tion? And is look­ing at per­cent­ages?

That Vol­ney apol­o­gy: Vol­ney of­fered a mea cul­pa, apol­o­gised, and shoul­dered all the blame for his role in the Sec­tion 34 is­sue...your thoughts?

We. Not. Buy­ing. That.It was a pa­thet­ic, nau­se­at­ing dis­play which was quite dis­turb­ing when one saw that it was hap­pen­ing in the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, di­rect­ed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and in­volv­ing a for­mer mem­ber of the High Court bench in T&T, that is what I found dis­turb­ing about it.

Do you think it ex­on­er­ates the AG? Is Sec­tion 34 dead?

Well, let me tell you what that is. That at­tempt, that pa­thet­ic at­tempt by Vol­ney, grov­el­ling in the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, in no way in­flu­ences our un­der­stand­ing of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T for the scan­dal of her man­date be­ing squan­dered in the Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co.

It in no way re­lieves the Cab­i­net or her Gov­ern­ment of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of ad­vanc­ing Sec­tion 34 for procla­ma­tion, and it in no way re­lieves the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as ad­vis­er to the Cab­i­net, out of whose min­istry came the procla­ma­tion re­quired, which mis­led the Pres­i­dent about the need to pro­claim Sec­tion 34.

None of those is­sues have been ad­dressed by Vol­ney's in­de­cent be­hav­iour, which we will view as an at­tempt by Vol­ney to get in­to the state trough that ex­ists at the AG's of­fice and oth­er kinds of ap­point­ments.

The PNM has al­ways been a stand­alone or­gan­i­sa­tion, a stand­alone par­ty, but in re­cent times you've been meet­ing with the Round­table, you've been hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions with trade unions, with oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties like the MSJ.

Do you fore­see any sort of al­liance go­ing for­ward in­to the next elec­tion or is the PNM go­ing to re­main on its own?

The PNM is a par­ty of the peo­ple of T&T. We made it quite clear that we are en­gaged with, for, and even­tu­al­ly by the peo­ple of T&T, and what we do, we en­sure that we have the ca­pac­i­ty to stand alone if we have to. We do not set out to cut our­selves off from the rest of the pop­u­la­tion.

We ad­mit that over time, with our long ser­vice in gov­ern­ment, that be­ing in gov­ern­ment has caused us to have drift­ed away from our orig­i­nal moor­ings, our con­nec­tion to the labour move­ment, our con­nec­tion to the pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies, and we are re-es­tab­lish­ing those con­nec­tions.We do not be­lieve in this thing about the era of this and the era of that. The PNM is a na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion and we stand with peo­ple of T&T, wher­ev­er they are.

So you are not rul­ing out the idea of sub­sum­ing an­oth­er ex­ist­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ty un­der the PNM um­brel­la?

Well, we have not gone there in try­ing to form ac­com­mo­da­tion, but cer­tain­ly, in the na­tion­al in­ter­est, we will stand shoul­der to shoul­der with oth­er cit­i­zens who have a sim­i­lar ob­jec­tive in mind. Which is why we are very com­fort­able par­tic­i­pat­ing in (Fri­day's march). We are all T&T cit­i­zens, we all have a com­mon goal; and that is to pro­tect the in­ter­est of T&T. So we are very hap­py with that arrange­ment...

The trade union move­ment can be seen as al­most fick­le, in that four years ago they were cam­paign­ing for the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship and now there is a mas­sive falling out. Are you con­cerned that, should you be elect­ed to of­fice, they could now hold you to ran­som?

No, they won't be able to. But I'll tell you what, I have tremen­dous re­spect for the trade union, the role that they play in the coun­try, the role that they are play­ing, the role that they should play. I see them as an in­te­gral part of the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment is­sues, the cred­it union move­ment, the IRO, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly as a body run­ning the af­fairs of To­ba­go.

I have a strong view and in­ten­tion to make lo­cal gov­ern­ment stronger in dis­pens­ing goods and ser­vices at a lo­cal lev­el, the uni­ver­si­ties, these are all com­po­nents of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment which we need and, with prop­er PNM guid­ance, can be­come stronger and at the end of the day, the pop­u­la­tion of T&T is bet­ter served.

Com­ing out of the elec­tions, you said there is no need for any heal­ing be­cause no one in­flict­ed any wounds, but is there go­ing to be a place for the Pen­ny slate?

I don't know about any "Pen­ny slate," I know about par­ty mem­bers choos­ing a na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive. I am not buy­ing in­to this arrange­ment that there was an elec­tion in the PNM and one body op­posed an­oth­er body. We com­pet­ed for of­fice, the mem­ber­ship has cho­sen its of­fi­cers, that is what it is. I don't know that they were ne­go­ti­at­ing po­si­tion based on who took part in the elec­tion.

This seems to be an ob­ses­sion with those out­side the PNM–it is not one for me. We had an elec­tion and there were peo­ple who were pre­dict­ing dooms­day and I do not sub­scribe to that, and I am not en­cour­ag­ing it.

I have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to all the mem­bers of this or­gan­i­sa­tion and we have a fo­cus, we have an as­sign­ment, and the or­gan­i­sa­tion is very broad-based and no­body is dis­qual­i­fied by virtue of of­fer­ing your­self to serve, by the same to­ken no­body gets a deed for hav­ing come for­ward. We are all par­ty mem­bers, and we will all con­tribute to the best of our abil­i­ty and ac­cord­ing to our will­ing­ness.

I am very sus­pi­cious of the peo­ple for whom the on­ly is­sue is one of heal­ing be­cause they may very well know about wounds that I am not fa­mil­iar with.The PNM is go­ing for­ward as a re­spect­ed al­ter­na­tive to the Gov­ern­ment of the day, our or­gan­i­sa­tion is get­ting stronger, will con­tin­ue to get stronger.I am un­der no il­lu­sion that there are some par­ty mem­bers with dif­fer­ent points of view and those points of view do not dis­qual­i­fy you by virtue of hav­ing those points of view. The or­gan­i­sa­tion is one for all rea­son­able opin­ions.

See­ing as you point­ed that out, the place for every­one, there is a pre­vail­ing cul­tur­al mind­set that the UNC is East In­di­an and the PNM is Afro-Trinida­di­an. Do you see the PNM as a broad-based po­lit­i­cal group?

There are peo­ple in the coun­try that would al­ways want to por­tray the PNM, por­tray me in the most neg­a­tive light and if they want to spend their day do­ing that, let them do that. We will be ex­am­ined and judged on our record, and there are those small mi­nori­ties who, as they say, the man con­vinced against his will, would be of the same opin­ion still, we know that.

So we do what we have to do and our record will speak for it­self. You reach out to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and they call it win­dow dress­ing; you find your­self not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of every­one and they call you racial.So we don't take ad­vice from those quar­ters. We rep­re­sent all the peo­ple of T&T. What we al­ways do is give every cit­i­zen the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the PNM, vote for the PNM, be a part of the PNM, and cit­i­zens vol­un­tar­i­ly choose to come on board.