Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says his de­ci­sion to ac­cept the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s choice of Gary Grif­fith as the best op­tion for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er was the biggest mis­take he has made in his life.

Speak­ing dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment meet­ing in Bel­mont last night, Row­ley said his de­ci­sion then was based on his be­lief that he should al­low ap­point­ments of the best peo­ple the coun­try had to of­fer for var­i­ous roles, re­gard­less of their po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions. This, he said, saw the ap­point­ments of for­mer UNC min­is­ters in var­i­ous oth­er roles.

How­ev­er, on the ap­point­ment of Grif­fith, he said, “And that is why when the (Po­lice Ser­vice) Com­mis­sion said that Gary Grif­fith was the best per­son for the job as com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, I take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for giv­ing him a chance and ladies and gen­tle­men, that is the biggest mis­take I have ever made.”

Not­ing that an au­dit of the Firearms De­part­ment of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice had just been com­plet­ed, he said it makes “very, very trou­ble­some read­ing.”

He al­so slammed Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for re­fus­ing to rep­ri­mand Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts for his re­cent at­tempt to scan­dalise and dis­grace his wife, Sharon.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men, I must say it is painful to watch a fe­male Op­po­si­tion Leader tol­er­ate and en­cour­age that on the grounds that ‘leave me out ah all yuh bac­cha­nal’ ... that is the same leader, same leader, who went in the Par­lia­ment with Ver­nel­la Al­leyne and Wade Mark and Mooni­lal and put on the Hansard that I’m a rapist. Bring a pic­ture of a house in­side the Par­lia­ment you know, blow up a house and come and tell the Par­lia­ment in this house the Op­po­si­tion Leader rape some­body. Af­ter that, I don’t ex­pect any­thing from Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar more than the worst. So, when Anil Roberts pre­pares videos and tried to scan­dalise my wife, all I could tell Anil, I could take ah horn if ah get one, I ent send­ing no­body to kill no­body.”

Ear­li­er in his ad­dress, Row­ley al­so said he’ll be in­struct­ing the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to put in­to the up­com­ing 2023 Bud­get a sep­a­rate and spe­cial pay­ment for every mem­ber of the Min­istry of Health for their ef­forts dur­ing the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

He said he hadn’t told Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yet but said one had to un­der­stand what it means to be in a po­si­tion where death is the out­come and yet peo­ple buck­led down and stayed in rooms where the dis­ease was to fight for the peo­ple.

He said he was brook­ing no ob­jec­tion from any­one on the pay­ment.

“We’re go­ing to do it as we can af­ford to,” Row­ley said.

Row­ley said it wasn’t to say Gov­ern­ment didn’t recog­nise what oth­ers did but those who walked the ex­tra mile rose to the oc­ca­sion and the health ser­vices were there for the peo­ple.

“And we must be a grate­ful peo­ple,” he said.

He said he ex­pect­ed ob­jec­tions about that and peo­ple say­ing, “Me too.”

“But I’ll say I hear you and un­der­stand you, but you were not there do­ing what they were do­ing,” he added, cit­ing health sec­tor per­son­nel who stood in the breach for T&T.

He laud­ed Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram for lead­ing the health team.

“Cometh the man and cometh the hour. I don’t know what T&T would have done in this pan­dem­ic with­out Roshan Paras­ram, who led the Min­istry of Health team...”

While Row­ley ad­mit­ted the crime sit­u­a­tion is un­ac­cept­able, he stood by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds. He spoke af­ter Hinds and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young spoke, giv­ing ac­counts of is­sues in their re­spec­tive port­fo­lios.

Row­ley said, “I con­grat­u­late my col­league, Min­is­ter Hinds, who gave you that syn­op­sis of what we’re do­ing in the many ar­eas of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and I con­grat­u­late Min­is­ter Young for his sum­ma­ry, much in­for­ma­tion that’s new to you.”

He said no­body can say that T&T didn’t have an un­ac­cept­able lev­el of crim­i­nal con­duct and vi­o­lent crime, some ap­proach­ing sense­less­ness. But he ques­tioned how that would change if the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter was changed.

“If that was so, it would have changed un­der the PP gov­ern­ment as they had six Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ters, plus a state of emer­gency, SOE,” he said.

He said T&T had a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter giv­ing the de­tails of what is be­ing done on the is­sue, adding the crime prob­lem was not unique to this coun­try and not­ing that T&T, Ja­maica and St Vin­cent were all buck­ling down to fight the is­sue, yet the Op­po­si­tion Leader, “who has noth­ing to of­fer,” says there is “ blood on the Prime Min­is­ter’s hands and Hinds must go.”