GAIL ALEXAN­DER

There are new front line faces in the Row­ley Cab­i­net fol­low­ing a reshuf­fle an­nounced yes­ter­day which will see a new At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour re­plac­ing Faris Al-Rawi.

Al-Rawi, who served as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al since the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion’s first term be­gan in 2015, was re­moved and shift­ed to Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment in a change that has been viewed as a straight out de­mo­tion.

How­ev­er, Al-Rawi, in a state­ment last night, said, “I’m elat­ed to de­liv­er that as­signed to me in the on­ly way I know - by suc­cess through hard work and en­ter­prise with all hands on deck.”

The change in the key Cab­i­net post of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was among sev­er­al oth­ers Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley made yes­ter­day.

The changes were made af­ter Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion yes­ter­day morn­ing to Row­ley. This was due to per­son­al fam­i­ly rea­sons, he said.

Row­ley ad­vised Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes to make the changes with ef­fect from yes­ter­day.

Ar­mour, a long­stand­ing mem­ber of the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty, was sworn in im­me­di­ate­ly yes­ter­day, with Row­ley wit­ness­ing the event.

Ar­mour is not an elect­ed mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and will there­fore be en­ter­ing the Gov­ern­ment as a Sen­a­tor. He didn’t an­swer calls yes­ter­day.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) an­nounced the oth­er changes in a state­ment.

Those re­voked were:

• ↓Faris Al-Rawi as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs

• ↓Clarence Ramb­harat as Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries

• ↓Pen­ne­lope Beck­les as Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment

• ↓Camille Robin­son-Reg­is as Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment

• ↓Kaz­im Ho­sein as Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment

Those ap­point­ed were:

• ↓Regi­nald Ar­mour as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs

• ↓Faris Al-Rawi as Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment

• ↓Camille Robin­son-Reg­is as Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment

• ↓Pen­ne­lope Beck­les as Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment

• ↓Kaz­im Ho­sein as Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Lands and Fish­eries.

The changes al­so ex­tend to the Sen­ate, where Ramb­harat’s ap­point­ment was re­voked. The ap­point­ment of PNM sen­a­tor Yokym­ma Bethelmy was al­so re­voked.

Bethelmy, who en­tered Par­lia­ment in 2020, was a Sen­ate back­bencher.

En­ter­ing the Sen­ate to re­place them are Ar­mour and Lau­rence His­lop. They will be sworn in to the Sen­ate at the next sit­ting.

His­lop was the PNM’s can­di­date for the Ma­son Hall/Mo­ri­ah seat in the 2021 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly polls. He lost, how­ev­er.

Al­so de­part­ing the Sen­ate is for­mer deputy Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Nigel De Fre­itas, who will as­sist Ho­sein and be re­spon­si­ble for Lands.

Sen­a­tor Dr Muham­mad Ibrahim will be ap­point­ed Deputy Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate.

The size of the Cab­i­net re­mains the same with yes­ter­day’s changes - 23.

The changes were the lat­est Row­ley has made to his team in the two terms.

Changes were made at dif­fer­ent points in 2016, 2018 and 2019.

Yes­ter­day’s re­as­sign­ments were the first full-blown reshuf­fle for this sec­ond term.

Row­ley made ad­just­ments fol­low­ing the April 2021 death of then En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young was ap­point­ed En­er­gy Min­is­ter. Fitzger­ald Hinds, who was in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs, was ap­point­ed to head Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

PNM sen­a­tor Fos­ter Cum­mings was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment.

Thanks to every­one —Ramb­harat

Ramb­harat had served as Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter since 2015 and was reap­point­ed in 2020 de­spite fail­ing to bring home the Ch­agua­nas East seat.

In a Face­book post on his de­par­ture, he said, “This morn­ing I for­mal­ly ad­vised the ho­n­ourable prime min­is­ter that for over six years I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve our coun­try in the Sen­ate, Cab­i­net and Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries.

“It was a coura­geous ap­point­ment by the Hon. Prime Min­is­ter. These roles and oth­ers gave me an op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve an im­por­tant sec­tor for which I am grate­ful. I owe my wife Camille and our chil­dren enor­mous grat­i­tude for all that I have been able to do with their un­der­stand­ing and sup­port.

“Serv­ing in my coun­try’s par­lia­ment was some­thing I set out to do since child­hood. With your help I did. To the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go wher­ev­er they work and what­ev­er they do, thanks for all the love, prayers and best wish­es.

“It’s Wednes­day, rock so!” Ramb­harat con­clud­ed with a heart emo­ji.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon is tipped to re­place Ramb­harat as Gov­ern­ment’s Sen­ate leader.

Yes­ter­day Al-Rawi is­sued a nine-para­graph state­ment in which he said he ac­cept­ed his new post with “great ex­cite­ment and plea­sure “to serve in a Min­istry that touch­es every cit­i­zen. He saw his task as dri­ving one of the ma­jor planks of Gov­ern­ment in­clud­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form.

Al-Rawi, who spoke of his work at the AG’s of­fice and its trans­for­ma­tion, thanked Row­ley for al­low­ing him to lead rad­i­cal re­forms.

Hints of a re­treat arose ear­ly this year when there was spec­u­la­tion about some min­is­ters “un­der­per­form­ing,” since Gov­ern­ment was un­der fire for var­i­ous is­sues.

Talk height­ened in Feb­ru­ary when Min­is­ters gave an ac­count of their min­istries’ plans at a Cab­i­net re­treat. Then, pic­tures were re­leased of Al-Rawi and oth­ers around a large ta­ble with Row­ley.

Al-Rawi, 50, had served as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al since Gov­ern­ment’s first term (2015-2020) and in the sec­ond term, which start­ed af­ter the Au­gust 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion which the PNM won. Al-Rawi, who re­cent­ly had COVID-19, re­sumed work last week.

Al-Rawi’s shift from the key post is viewed as a ma­jor de­mo­tion and as a con­se­quence of at­tacks by the Op­po­si­tion in re­cent years. This in­clud­ed on con­tro­ver­sies con­cern­ing the Oc­to­ber 2016 is­sue where Al-Rawi’s chil­dren were pho­tographed in pos­ses­sion of mil­i­tary-grade as­sault ri­fles, to al­le­ga­tions of Gov­ern­ment rental of build­ings owned by his fam­i­ly mem­bers.

Is­sues con­cern­ing leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing fail­ure on Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion law to ap­point a com­mis­sion­er, had al­so dogged Al-Rawi.

Some mem­bers of Al-Rawi’s San Fer­nan­do West con­stituen­cy ex­pressed sad­ness at the change yes­ter­day.

I’ll car­ry on Clarence’s work — Ho­sein

Robin­son-Reg­is was first ap­point­ed to the Min­istry of Plan­ning in 2015 al­so. She was shift­ed to So­cial De­vel­op­ment in 2019 when Cher­rie Ann Crichlow-Cock­burn was re­moved from that port­fo­lio.

Robin­son-Reg­is is now be­ing shift­ed to Hous­ing, an­oth­er key min­istry where the Gov­ern­ment’s pub­lic out­reach and im­age is con­cerned. She didn’t an­swer calls yes­ter­day.

Beck­les held Hous­ing since 2020. She was pre­ced­ed in the first PNM term by Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald (2015-16), Ran­dall Mitchell (2016-2018), Row­ley (April- Au­gust 2018) and Ed­mund Dil­lon (2018-2020).

Ho­sein was ap­point­ed Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter in 2016 and act­ed as Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter sev­er­al times, he con­firmed.

Ho­sein added, “I’ll con­tin­ue where my col­league left off and work with farm­ers, fish­er­folk and all sec­tors with spe­cial en­cour­age­ment to more youths to get in­volved in agri­cul­ture to feed T&T.”

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