Louis Lee Sing is a man who has held many port­fo­lios in this coun­try. He is eas­i­ly recog­nised as a busi­ness­man, me­dia mogul, for­mer may­or of Port-of-Spain, for­mer chair­man of sev­er­al state board, fa­ther, grand­fa­ther and most re­cent­ly po­lit­i­cal leader. He sat down with Guardian Me­dia for a one-on-one in­ter­view and this is what he had to say.

Chester Sam­bra­no: Have you ever thought about mak­ing a repli­ca may­oral chain and wear­ing it like a zess­er?

Lee Sing: (Hearty laugh­ter) That’s a good one. Now, Chester, that chain is not a cheap chain at all. In fact, many times when I wore the chain you would see a lot of po­lice and se­cu­ri­ty, it wasn’t to pro­tect the may­or it was to pro­tect the chain.

Do you ever miss be­ing may­or?

Not re­al­ly…Whether we want to ac­cept it or not Port-of-Spain is a bro­ken city and what I do miss is hav­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to mend these bro­ken pieces.

What is your most mem­o­rable mo­ment be­ing may­or?

A con­ver­sa­tion with Dr Row­ley. The trade union (Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers Trade Union) at that time had been act­ing up and I got a call from Dr Row­ley in which he said to me, Lee Sing, go easy on that trade union. I said, which trade union? He said the trade union by you. I say boy, you hear­ing your­self, to which I got no re­ply. And I told him then, if I can’t fix some­thing when we in op­po­si­tion how would you fix it when we in gov­ern­ment? Well, I guess that sto­ry has played out it­self over and over in the last four years.

What is tak­ing up most of your time these days?

Strange enough I make sure that I am not busy. The way I have struc­tured my life, and I am not one who be­lieves that I must be chas­ing af­ter ma­te­r­i­al wealth, I have con­cerns about leav­ing suf­fi­cient for my five grand­daugh­ters, but oth­er than that I see about my book­store, The Book Source. I look af­ter what­ev­er oth­er busi­ness­es I have to look af­ter and I’ve had two books on my desk for quite some time, the ti­tle of the first is The Dead Dons which fo­cus­es on com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers who have passed and the sec­ond ti­tle is Clos­er to The Church. Well, you know your par­ents had a say­ing clos­er to the church fur­ther from God. There are some re­al sto­ries in that book, ac­tu­al sto­ries that hap­pened, but it is be­ing fic­tion­alised so if you see it in the book and you see some­thing you recog­nise it might not be the re­al sto­ry. Then I have con­cerns about the North Coast of Trinidad that it has al­ways been ne­glect­ed, I watch at Mara­cas Bay...it has de­cayed and it will soon die, and I re­al­ly have an in­ter­est in what hap­pens to Matelot. But as a res­i­dent of Blan­chisseuse my­self, I have to do what is nec­es­sary and I am work­ing with the com­mu­ni­ty coun­cil on two projects. One, the de­vel­op­ment of a bread and break­fast in­dus­try up there and sec­ond­ly, the cre­ation and de­vel­op­ment of a cred­it union.

So, let’s talk about the po­lit­i­cal par­ty, is it pri­mar­i­ly Port-of-Spain you are fo­cus­ing on?

Port-of-Spain.

But do you have any plans to ex­pand in the fu­ture?

On­ly God will di­rect me on that, if Port-of-Spain is a dis­as­ter then why am I wast­ing my time with peo­ple who don’t want to see. My po­si­tion is abun­dant­ly clear, if peo­ple choose to be PNM till they are dead, know that the day will come when we will all die un­der the PNM and so I will leave it like that for it to hap­pen.

What was the de­cid­ing fac­tor in form­ing this par­ty?

I think peo­ple are hurt­ing bad­ly and peo­ple are not silent on the fact that they are hurt­ing, and wher­ev­er I go in the city I am still a recog­nis­able face and peo­ple seem to re­mem­ber some of the things that I may have been in­volved in.

Are you ready for De­cem­ber 2?

I don’t think in an elec­tion you are ever ready…His­to­ry tells me that you are nev­er re­al­ly ready, you do all the work in­to polling day and while polling go­ing on you still do­ing what you can to get an ex­tra vote…It’s just an ex­cit­ing ex­pe­ri­ence if you are giv­en to ex­cite­ment but for me, this oc­ca­sion is not about ex­cite­ment this oc­ca­sion is about the pop­u­la­tion say­ing open­ly what it wants and I think the pop­u­la­tion will say what it wants.

Ul­ti­mate­ly you seem to be the face of the par­ty but who are some of the oth­er peo­ple in this with you?

Hope­ful­ly we will in­tro­duce our can­di­dates to the pub­lic as an or­gan­ised en­ti­ty next week Wednes­day (Oc­to­ber 23), we are aim­ing for that…This city needs to breathe, this city needs to smile again, this city has lost its hu­man­ness and we are go­ing to set about to cre­ate a hu­mane cap­i­tal city.

Do you have am­bi­tions to be Prime Min­is­ter of this coun­try one day?

Boy, lis­ten to me, my moth­er al­ways used to say 'Louis, God nev­er puts you where he doesn’t want you to be.' And these are con­sid­er­a­tions I nev­er gave., I nev­er in my wildest dreams ever want­ed to be the may­or of Port-of-Spain.

What are your thoughts on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley?

Boy, I think that is an un­fair ques­tion to me, the truth be told, I nom­i­nat­ed Dr Row­ley for that as­sign­ment. I re­mem­ber it all too well hav­ing been called by Jack­ie Lazarus and Noel Gar­cia a night when Prof Cud­joe and I were leav­ing Port-of-Spain to head back to Boston. And they both said to me that I had to do some­thing be­cause Mr Man­ning hav­ing lost the elec­tion was try­ing to as­sem­ble a team of sen­a­tors to al­low him to stay on as the po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty and that I should do some­thing and I could do some­thing. I didn’t think I could do any­thing and I told them that. But, it was the red-eye flight and I didn’t sleep on the flight. And when we were go­ing up the morn­ing I said Sel­wyn, pull in that Mc Don­ald’s, I want to do some­thing. I called Dale and Tony and I said, folks, I un­der­stand that Mr Man­ning, our for­mer prime min­is­ter, is as we speak do­ing his own gym­nas­tics to at­tempt to stay on as the po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty and I am afraid we can’t al­low that be­cause this is the sec­ond ear­ly elec­tions he’s called that has desta­bilised the work of the par­ty and the lives of many peo­ple and so I re­al­ly feel we should tell Mr Man­ning to put two wheels on his heels and go, I am ap­peal­ing to every­body who is hear­ing me this morn­ing to go down to Bal­isi­er House to­mor­row and say to him in one voice, Mr Man­ning, please go. I didn’t tell them to abuse the man at all be­cause he is a man I've al­ways had tremen­dous re­spect for. But in that very con­ver­sa­tion Mr Enoch asked me, Mr Lee Sing, you say that Mr Man­ning must go, but if not Mr Man­ning, who? And I re­spond­ed, there is on­ly one per­son who could do the job as far as I am con­cerned, based on the bench in the Par­lia­ment that we had, and in any event Dr Row­ley had been wait­ing in the wilder­ness for 19 years so he must have de­vel­oped skills and I rec­om­mend that he is the man that we put, and that is how it hap­pened. How­ev­er, I feel there are too many things that are not right about Dr Row­ley’s lead­er­ship, he has very flawed judg­ment. The Mar­lene Mc Don­ald thing—one minute she’s a min­is­ter, next minute she’s not, one minute she’s a min­is­ter next minute she’s not, the third time she’s a min­is­ter...you know that kind of thing.

Where did it go wrong be­tween you and Dr Row­ley?

It didn’t go wrong with me, it went wrong with Dr Row­ley. Pri­or to the Mar­lene Mc Don­ald fi­as­co, Dr Row­ley was at­tempt­ing to move his first vote of no con­fi­dence against Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and I wrote to him a let­ter out­lin­ing why it was not a good de­ci­sion at that time, point­ing out that Kam­la was go­ing in­to her in­ter­nal elec­tions in her par­ty and the in­for­ma­tion is that she was hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty. I said if you do this you would line up her troops be­hind her in the Par­lia­ment and you will be out­num­bered and out­gunned and I gave him my ra­tio­nal, it would ap­pear that one of his peo­ple would have leaked the let­ter to the Op­po­si­tion and the Op­po­si­tion would have used that let­ter as part of their re­but­tals to him in the Par­lia­ment, he was a most an­gry man...Short­ly there­after there was a move to im­peach the may­or of Port-of-Spain. I don’t think Dr Row­ley ever for­gave me for some­thing that was re­al­ly his do­ing…That start­ed what I con­sid­ered to be the dif­fi­cul­ties be­tween him and me.

Do you think you will ever re­join the PNM?

I don’t know how God will di­rect my foot­steps, but what I see of the PNM now...I heard Fer­die Fer­reira say­ing re­cent­ly that he is an un­re­pen­tant PNM-mite, but that to me is an in­ter­est­ing line com­ing from a man who left the PNM for a long pe­ri­od, he was out there with the ONR then the NAR, so un­re­pen­tant is he, well maybe he is a born-again PNM-mite. I don’t know that I will ever be a born-again PNM-mite be­cause for me to want to be as­so­ci­at­ed with an or­gan­i­sa­tion that or­gan­i­sa­tion must have some mean­ing if not to me and my life, my fam­i­ly de­vel­op­ment, it must have some mean­ing to the de­vel­op­ment of some­thing that is much more im­por­tant to me, the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go. I don’t know that the PNM has any rel­e­vance to the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go now.

Here is an in­ter­est­ing ques­tion, your daugh­ter-in-law is the PRO of the PNM, is it awk­ward at fam­i­ly gath­er­ings?

No, I have a tremen­dous ca­pac­i­ty for putting things in­to com­part­ments. I will not com­ment on what she has de­cid­ed. If you get that sec­ond book of mine—I Used to Live in Heav­en, Let­ters to my Grand­daugh­ters—you would see where I have writ­ten about that…The fam­i­ly is very im­por­tant and if you could fix the fam­i­ly you could fix al­most any­thing.

What are your thoughts on the UNC and its leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar right now?

I think the UNC like the PNM has more or less the same kind of chal­lenges, there is a cri­sis of lead­er­ship in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It isn’t that Kam­la isn’t a good leader, but cer­tain­ly, she is not a good leader for the time and for the now. There are times when you need a peace­time leader, there are times when you need a wartime leader, she does not fit the bill for the now.

So aside from pol­i­tics, you are al­so a busi­ness­man. When I met you, you were the chair­man of Citadel Lim­it­ed, the par­ent com­pa­ny of 95.5 Fm, 96.7FM and 107.1 FM, what made you de­cide to sell it to OCM (One Caribbean Me­dia)?

Let me say it was a good busi­ness de­ci­sion for the share­hold­ers, we all did well. You know peo­ple be­lieve that you should hold on to some­thing in busi­ness be­cause you feel that it’s a lega­cy busi­ness and you want to leave it for some­body. I have a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive of life. I be­lieve that you help peo­ple but peo­ple must al­so help them­selves and so by my tak­ing what I be­lieve was an ex­treme­ly good de­ci­sion for the share­hold­ers, the share­hold­ers all ben­e­fit­ed hand­some­ly, but it didn’t end there be­cause we were able in more ways than one as for­mer part­ners to do oth­er things to­geth­er and these oth­er things hope­ful­ly will bear the kinds of fruit that Citadel bore.

Do you ever miss Dale and Tony?

I miss them from the point of view that we don’t sit down and chat the way we used to and in the con­text of both of them, Tony was the per­son I re­al­ly had a very close re­la­tion­ship with.

Do you ever think about get­ting back in­to me­dia own­er­ship?

It is not some­thing that is as ex­cit­ing as it used to be for all the good rea­sons. For me, some­thing is not just about do­ing a project and do­ing it well, I could do that to­mor­row. If I were to get a li­cence, I would be able to put to­geth­er the best talk ra­dio right now and change it up again be­cause I think it needs to be changed up. What is hap­pen­ing now is that peo­ple are just open­ing the mics and talk­ing crap.

What are your brief thoughts on the state of the me­dia?

I think the me­dia has lost its shine. I be­lieve the qual­i­ty we once had in Trinidad is no longer there. I think large­ly be­cause the me­dia have opened up so quick­ly and peo­ple had to fill va­can­cies and get peo­ple to do things, we brought in peo­ple who weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly good qual­i­ty peo­ple…The me­dia had be­come its own worst en­e­my and It will pay a price for that, I think the me­dia is mak­ing it­self ir­rel­e­vant.

Are you in­to any oth­er busi­ness ven­tures?

Not any­thing that I would want to share with you.

Busi­ness aside, let’s talk a lit­tle bit about your books.

The first book—Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment in Trinidad, Con­spir­a­cy Against The Peo­ple is a clas­si­cal take on hav­ing served as the may­or of Port-of-Spain. Hav­ing done that I got a clear un­der­stand­ing about lo­cal gov­ern­ment. Peo­ple come out and they vote for you think­ing that you would be able to do some­thing for them but in the fi­nal analy­sis, you can’t do any­thing for them re­al­ly and that is the truth. Now if you hap­pen to be in a coun­cil with a good may­or and strong al­der­men you might be able to get some stuff done.

And what about I Used to Live in Heav­en, Let­ters to my Grand­daugh­ters?

It’s re­al­ly a book about life in Trinidad. When I say I used to live in heav­en, but I ex­tend­ed the book be­yond Trinidad be­cause there is a chap­ter on Barack Oba­ma, there are four chap­ters in the book that talks about squan­der­ma­nia in Trinidad. The book al­so doc­u­ments the kind of rev­enue this coun­try has seen over the pe­ri­od 1974 to 2016. It looks at the mur­der rate, there is a chap­ter in the book that talks about crime reigns and rules. There were al­so chap­ters on wom­an­hood and telling my grand­daugh­ters to de­mand that they be treat­ed roy­al­ly re­gard­less of the re­la­tion­ship. It is not on­ly for my grand­daugh­ters, quite frankly it is a book re­al­ly for all grand­daugh­ters.

So, as we be­gin to wind down this in­ter­view, I want to get to know a lit­tle bit about Louis Lee Sing the man—you men­tioned your grand­daugh­ters sev­er­al times, how has it been for you be­ing a grand­fa­ther?

Some­times you ask your­self is it pos­si­ble that you could love your grand­chil­dren more than you love your own chil­dren and that’s a ques­tion that I’ve posed in the book. For my part maybe, it is that when­ev­er I am in­ter­act­ing with my grand­chil­dren it is not a stress­ful sit­u­a­tion as com­pared to when I would have been in­ter­act­ing with my chil­dren…when you are deal­ing with your grand­chil­dren its more about love and ad­mi­ra­tion.

If you have to choose one mo­ment in your life that you will nev­er for­get what would that be?

(He told the sto­ry of al­most be­com­ing an op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor un­der Mr Man­ning ) So, if you say to me de­spite all the years how come you nev­er of­fered your­self up for of­fice, it had to do with the fact that it is not some­thing I ever want­ed. If I did it in 2015 it was be­cause the ma­jor­i­ty of the par­ty groups in the con­stituen­cy nom­i­nat­ed me and it was be­cause there was a huge group in South Port-of-Spain that did not want the in­cum­bent and felt that I hav­ing done such a great job as may­or would be a bet­ter can­di­date for Port-of-Spain South. It is at that point I dis­patched to Dr Row­ley, to Ash­ton Ford, to Franklin Khan, to Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus a file with all the in­for­ma­tion on Mar­lene Mc Don­ald, all, all the in­for­ma­tion, it is that file to which Dr Row­ley al­lud­ed and he said he didn’t take it se­ri­ous­ly be­cause I was con­test­ing against Mar­lene for the of­fice. The point is this, even if that is so, did he read the con­tents of the file, did he look at the cheque, the sched­ule, the date that the ap­provals were writ­ten on the let­ters, all of that. If it were Mr Man­ning, he would have tak­en a dif­fer­ent po­si­tion.

Fi­nal­ly, what do you do for leisure?

I play golf and I have a small wood­craft shop. Do­ing wood­work has al­ways been a pas­sion of mine. I al­so go to the North Coast, I meet friends for lunch, I go to din­ners, things like that.