While Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley may be open to find­ing com­mon ground with the Op­po­si­tion, he is not as will­ing to put aside his dif­fer­ences to unite with To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia asked Row­ley if he in­tends to ex­tend an olive branch to Au­gus­tine for the greater good of To­ba­go.

In re­sponse, Row­ley ad­mit­ted that he hasn’t yet got­ten over the treat­ment he re­ceived from the Chief Sec­re­tary when he was ac­cused by Au­gus­tine of try­ing to un­der­mine the THA.

Row­ley al­so jok­ing­ly asked, “What you in­ter­fer­ing with Far­ley for? Far­ley have more prob­lems than he can deal with.”

Ex­plain­ing his griev­ances with the Chief Sec­re­tary, Row­ley said he met Au­gus­tine on two oc­ca­sions, both of which were civilised meet­ings.

He said the first was a break­fast meet­ing where no busi­ness was dis­cussed. On the sec­ond oc­ca­sion, he said he took a del­e­ga­tion of min­is­ters whose port­fo­lios had some di­rect con­tact with the busi­ness of the sis­ter isle over to To­ba­go.

He said the meet­ing last­ed six hours and in­clud­ed the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter and Tourism and Cul­ture Min­is­ter.

Row­ley said, “The pur­pose for that par­tic­u­lar meet­ing was to broach the idea of Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment along­side the THA, or re­ceiv­ing from the THA or as­sist­ing the THA with a de­vel­op­ment plan for To­ba­go. So, if we get that de­vel­op­ment plan and agree on it and if it has the buy-in on both sides, it doesn’t mat­ter who is in of­fice in To­ba­go. When you’re in of­fice you just have to do the job. Do the work. But, the work is known to all of us, and you have the sup­port of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. That is the last time I saw Far­ley.”

He added, “The next time I saw him oth­er than that meet­ing was in a spe­cial sit­ting of the as­sem­bly called spe­cial­ly to ad­vise To­ba­go that the Prime Min­is­ter and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment is un­der­min­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion in a huge con­spir­a­cy with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and my pri­vate lawyer, and I have been meet­ing with some man. All I can tell is, I haven’t got­ten over that yet ... when I re­cov­er from that, I will let you know.”

Row­ley al­so said Au­gus­tine went a step fur­ther by tak­ing those grave al­le­ga­tions to the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly of the Unit­ed Na­tions Chief Sec­re­tary, where he told the world that the Prime Min­is­ter and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher were un­der­min­ing the THA in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and that is some­thing he is not sure he’ll ever get over.

Cabo Star woes

On an­oth­er is­sue, the Prime Min­is­ter de­scribed those com­plain­ing about the is­sues faced with the Cabo Star tem­porar­i­ly be­ing out of ser­vice as “un­rea­son­able.”

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of the car­go ves­sel, he said, “Some­times there are peo­ple in this coun­try that are un­rea­son­able. It is we peo­ple but they un­rea­son­able. We have a car­go ves­sel that goes to To­ba­go on dai­ly ba­sis tak­ing all the car­go that can go to To­ba­go. That is To­ba­go thing,” he said.

Not­ing that be­fore the fire on the Cabo Star there were no is­sues with car­go go­ing to To­ba­go, he said, “We now don’t have the Cabo Star to go to To­ba­go. But in our ser­vice to To­ba­go, we im­me­di­ate­ly, not the next week or the next year, we had an in­crease in the num­ber of trips that the fast fer­ries were mak­ing. But, of course, there is some car­go that they can’t car­ry. The link be­tween Port-of-Spain and Scar­bor­ough is ser­viced by the Cabo Star, the Spir­it, the Galleons Pas­sage, the Buc­coo Reef and the APT James. I don’t know any in­ter-is­land con­nec­tion any­where in the Caribbean that has a con­nec­tion like that, ser­viced by five pieces of ex­pen­sive equip­ment. But the fire on the ves­sel cre­ates a new sit­u­a­tion. One im­me­di­a­cy, two short term, three re­pairs to the Cabo Star and back to nor­mal. Why are we be­hav­ing like that?”