Gail Alexan­der

New Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, who had been a CL Fi­nan­cial di­rec­tor, had held dis­cus­sions with the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor even be­fore the CL cri­sis loomed. Tewarie con­firmed this, speak­ing briefly about his in­volve­ment with CL af­ter his ap­point­ment yes­ter­day as the new Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­ders Af­fairs Min­is­ter. Tewarie comes to Gov­ern­ment from the post of UWI pro-vice chan­cel­lor in charge of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and a broad back­ground in acad­e­mia, pol­i­tics and busi­ness. Tewarie re­places for­mer min­is­ter Mary King who was fired by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Tues­day amid al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing. This con­cerns a Plan­ning Min­istry con­tract award­ed to a King fam­i­ly firm.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day thanked King for her ser­vices as Tewarie was sworn in­to of­fice at Knowsley Build­ing, Queen's Park West. Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, who ad­min­is­tered the oath of of­fice, laud­ed Tewarie. He not­ed that both had served to­geth­er at UWI and that Tewarie had suc­ceed­ed him as UWI prin­ci­pal. Tewarie has had a strong back­ground in T&T's pol­i­tics, busi­ness and acad­e­mia in the last 30 years. He played a large role in shap­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship elec­tion man­i­festo, PP of­fi­cials said. Orig­i­nal­ly from St Au­gus­tine, Tewarie taught at San Fer­nan­do Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School and UWI. He was in­volved in the Tapia Move­ment, served as NAR gen­er­al sec­re­tary and an NAR gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and was a Ca­roni East MP. He al­so served as prin­ci­pal of UWI, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of UWI's In­sti­tute of Busi­ness and, among oth­ers, with Re­pub­lic Bank, CL Fi­nan­cial Ltd and the Trinidad Pub­lish­ing Co board.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "His wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge will serve the Gov­ern­ment in good stead." Tewarie ad­mit­ted that the Plan­ning min­is­te­r­i­al post came with "mixed feel­ings," since King was a friend of his. On his for­mer link with CL Fi­nan­cial, Tewarie said: "I made the con­tri­bu­tion that I could there...There is a sto­ry to tell about that, but this is not the time or place. "All I would say is that be­fore any cri­sis even loomed, I had con­ver­sa­tions with the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank," he said. He said he might have been around when the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process in 2009 was made to pay Cli­co div­i­dends in 2009. Tewarie said: "I can­not re­mem­ber, I may have, I can­not re­mem­ber the ex­act tim­ing, I may have-I don't know...The records would in­di­cate whether I did or not."

Tewarie said he had had "se­ri­ous oblig­a­tions" at UWI and had to weigh those kinds of de­ci­sions be­fore ac­cept­ing the min­is­te­r­i­al post. He, how­ev­er, added: "I'm hap­py the Prime Min­is­ter had the con­fi­dence in me to in­vite me in­to the Cab­i­net. "It was a hard de­ci­sion...but I'm hap­py to be on board and I want to do the best I can for T&T and make the best con­tri­bu­tion I can to Gov­ern­ment and I want to sup­port the Prime Min­is­ter to be a high-achiev­ing Prime Min­is­ter in TT-she has start­ed very well." On pri­or­i­ties, Tewarie said his first would be to align min­is­te­r­i­al ac­tion in the min­istry to the PP's man­i­festo com­mit­ment. He said he would al­so ex­am­ine the ex­tent of the con­nect­ed­ness be­tween Plan­ning and the oth­er min­istries as part of a Cab­i­net team.

He said his oth­er pri­or­i­ty would be to work co­he­sive­ly with his col­leagues and the team "to make things hap­pen." Pres­i­dent Richards said he took par­tic­u­lar plea­sure in ad­min­is­ter­ing the oath of of­fice to Tewarie be­cause of their for­mer UWI ties. "I have known him for large num­ber of years...and I know him par­tic­u­lar­ly well in aca­d­e­m­ic life," Richards added. Richards said Tewarie had ex­hib­it­ed con­sid­er­able skills, fi­nesse and use of vast knowl­edge to bring ef­fort in their ear­ly days at UWI. "He will, I'm sure, per­form cred­itably and bring his vast ex­pe­ri­ence, skills and tal­ents to bear on his new as­sign­ment," the Pres­i­dent added.

Wit­ness­ing Tewarie take the oath of of­fice yes­ter­day were his wife Kam­la, his par­ents Dabiedatt and Ram­dai Tewarie, and his son and daugh­ter-in-law, Ni­rad and Cheryle Tewarie. Al­so present were COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an, MSJ leader Er­rol McLeod and UNC's Jack Warn­er and Roodal Mooni­lal. Tewarie takes up du­ties to­day when he at­tends the week­ly Cab­i­net meet­ing and then goes to the Plan­ning Min­istry. He will be sworn in as a Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor next Tues­day.