KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The much-an­tic­i­pat­ed bi­par­ti­san crime talks pro­posed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo may not hap­pen af­ter all.

This is as both the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion are point­ing fin­gers of blame at each oth­er for the de­lay.

How­ev­er, if the meet­ing does con­vene, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has made it clear that he will not be present and ac­cused the UNC of us­ing gim­micks.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s yes­ter­day, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus for the meet­ing was on the leg­isla­tive agen­da while the Op­po­si­tion out­lined is­sues such as the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice’s role and stand your ground laws.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that it was the par­tic­i­pants, name­ly At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, sug­gest­ed as the chair of the meet­ing, that up­set Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The oth­er mem­bers of his team in­clude Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

Row­ley said, “This is not about me. It is about the Gov­ern­ment meet­ing the Op­po­si­tion. They deal with per­son­al­i­ties. We deal with in­sti­tu­tions. This is not for me to pro­mote my­self. Self-pro­mo­tion is for them. I have work up to my eye­ball. I can guar­an­tee you, when I am not there, the team that is sent there from this PNM Gov­ern­ment will do ex­act­ly what the peo­ple’s in­ter­est re­quires, which is to look af­ter the peo­ple’s in­ter­est.

“To tell me and to make it a con­di­tion, ap­par­ent­ly, she wants to talk to me. She has my phone num­ber. She knows where I live. If the Op­po­si­tion Leader says she wants to come see me now, I’ll tell her come. But don’t come to tell me that if we have to come to talk about an is­sue, don’t tell me that if I am not there, it can­not go for­ward... She wants to pro­mote her­self through crime talks. I want the Gov­ern­ment to talk to the Op­po­si­tion. If she can’t find four peo­ple to say talk to the Gov­ern­ment, then say so,” he added.

The Prime Min­is­ter ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of want­i­ng crime to con­tin­ue for its own po­lit­i­cal gain.

“It is my view, hav­ing worked with the peo­ple in the Op­po­si­tion, that they do not want any im­prove­ment in the crime sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try, be­cause they be­lieve that the coun­try is be­ing beat­en down by reg­u­lar, fre­quent, out­ra­geous, crim­i­nal con­duct, that is a po­lit­i­cal bo­nan­za for them to en­gage ver­bal­ly and for them to en­gage and cam­paign on elec­toral­ly. So, they don’t re­al­ly want any change,” he said.

Row­ley added, that his Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to fight crime.

“If any­body is des­per­ate for a change in this coun­try, in this mat­ter, is the Gov­ern­ment. Be­cause the Gov­ern­ment is held re­spon­si­ble for the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty and the per­son­al con­duct of every­body in the coun­try. So, when you tell me that you’re not go­ing to name peo­ple un­less the Prime Min­is­ter is chair­ing it, you couldn’t be se­ri­ous.”

He said it was not the first time the UNC re­fused to par­take in cru­cial meet­ings and cit­ed the Health Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee.

And, while the Op­po­si­tion did not name all four of its mem­bers for the talks, Per­sad-Bisses­sar want­ed for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice and leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance Gary Grif­fith to take part.

To that, Row­ley added, “When the Op­po­si­tion Leader is telling me that un­less the con­di­tion is met where Gary Grif­fith is part of a team to talk, that should tell you all that you need to know.”

He said the Op­po­si­tion could not dic­tate the terms and con­di­tions of the talks as the meet­ing was not about op­tics.

Dur­ing her in­au­gur­al speech at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the Par­lia­ment in Sep­tem­ber, Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo said the na­tion­al crime re­sponse must be a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort as she called for uni­ty in Par­lia­ment to deal with crime fight­ing.