Gail Alexan­der

No Com­mon­wealth ob­servers are com­ing for T&T’s elec­tions, but there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of CARI­COM ob­servers.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who ad­dressed the is­sue dur­ing his Fri­day Night Lime on Face­book, al­so said he is open to prop­er­ly or­gan­ised po­lit­i­cal de­bates, he isn’t go­ing for any “Mick­ey Mouse fool­ish­ness.”

The so­cial me­dia event was based on the rul­ing par­ty’s con­cept of pre­sent­ing Dr Row­ley in a dif­fer­ent light in an in­for­mal event host­ed by young artistes. It fea­tured con­ver­sa­tions with young stu­dents and en­tre­pre­neurs along with en­ter­tain­ment.

The Prime Min­is­ter got a tas­sa les­son from mem­bers of an all-fe­male group. He played a round on the na­gaara with back­up from the group on the dhol and jhal. Af­ter the first set, Row­ley threw his hands in the air, de­clar­ing hap­pi­ly: “I’m play­ing the tas­sa!!”

He said he had seen the Drag­on Boys group play “some se­ri­ous tas­sa” and did an­oth­er set sway­ing to the beat and in tune with the band.

He was lat­er pre­sent­ed with the drum he played and said: “I think I’m go­ing to like this.’’

Dr Row­ley al­so replied to ques­tions sent in by view­ers, in­clud­ing the mat­ter of elec­tion ob­servers. He said the Com­mon­wealth had said they didn’t think a team would be able to come be­cause of the cost. It was al­so dif­fi­cult to get to T&T since there are no com­mer­cial flights.

Since they hadn’t ar­rived by Fri­day, he said: “We may not have a Com­mon­wealth team.”

Dr Row­ley said if the gov­ern­ment as­sist­ed in bring­ing the team, in the event they did a favourable re­port, the PNM might be ac­cused of pay­ing for the team.

“We’re not do­ing that,” he said.

He said CARI­COM had al­so been in­vit­ed to send ob­servers and three coun­tries had agreed to pro­vide a team.

“So we’re wait­ing to hear what that means. The Sec­re­tari­at will now ask each coun­try to send a rep­re­sen­ta­tive,” he said.

The CARI­COM team will have to get here by this week­end but if T&T doesn’t get them, he said: “We’re no ba­nana re­pub­lic and over­ly trou­ble­some. We con­duct our­selves un­less some­one in­tends to mis­be­have.”

Dr Row­ley said he would like to have the ob­servers since “some­times they make in­ter­est­ing com­ments if you have to make ad­just­ments.”

He al­so said he’s par­tic­i­pat­ed in many de­bates but not­ed that some peo­ple are not in­ter­est­ed but if there are par­ties whose lead­ers are in­ter­est­ed in se­ri­ous­ly ex­am­in­ing is­sues in an un­bi­ased way in a prop­er­ly or­gan­ised arrange­ment, de­bates could go on. How­ev­er, he wouldn’t par­tic­i­pate in “any Mick­ey Mouse fool­ish­ness.”

The De­bates Com­mis­sion was meant to or­gan­ise de­bates and he is pre­pared to par­tic­i­pate twice but peo­ple had backed out, he added

If there is a prop­er­ly or­gan­ised arrange­ment “I wouldn’t have a prob­lem...I would like to say why Gov­ern­ment has done things and what it’s done and why it should be re-elect­ed but some politi­cians hide be­hind the fake news and should be fact-checked and those who can’t be fact-checked wouldn’t want to be in de­bates,’’ he said.