Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day linked the can­dle­light and prayer vig­ils held in Feb­ru­ary for slain court work­er An­drea Bharatt to the spike in COVID-19 num­bers.

Dur­ing the de­bate on the Mo­tion on Mat­ters per­tain­ing to the State of Emer­gency yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar once again ques­tioned whether the Prime Min­is­ter was re­spon­si­ble for the climb­ing COVID-19 num­bers when he in­vit­ed peo­ple to go to To­ba­go for the East­er week­end.

But Row­ley sought to cor­rect the state­ment and point­ed fin­gers at the Op­po­si­tion in­stead, not­ing they were “or­gan­is­ing” vig­ils in the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic.

“They ask­ing for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to how we got here. Be care­ful what you ask for be­cause you will get it,” Row­ley said.

Row­ley’s con­tri­bu­tion turned in­to a heat­ed ex­change with Op­po­si­tion mem­ber Sad­dam Ho­sein, who raised his voice over the Prime Min­is­ter’s to say that the vig­ils in­volved the fam­i­ly mem­bers of the vic­tims of crime.

“You can shout as much as you like, that hap­pened in this coun­try,” Row­ley said.

House Speak­er Brigid An­nisette-George rose to her feet dur­ing the ex­change, which usu­al­ly sig­nals that the speak­ers should sit down, but both men con­tin­ued speak­ing and it was An­nisette-George who in­stead sat down, leaned back in her chair and stared straight ahead un­til Ho­sein stopped speak­ing and the Prime Min­is­ter con­tin­ued.

“And talk­ing about take the threat se­ri­ous­ly. You ad­vised the Gov­ern­ment to take the threat se­ri­ous­ly and we didn’t?” he said.

“The on­ly coun­try, in the Caribbean, where in the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic, the Op­po­si­tion or­gan­ise gath­er­ings of peo­ple called vig­ils. Thou­sands of peo­ple for a month, try­ing to ex­ploit the death of An­drea Bharatt and you ask­ing me how we got here.”

“What oth­er gath­er­ings took place?” he asked.

He said night af­ter night, the Op­po­si­tion paid for vig­ils that brought peo­ple to­geth­er dur­ing a pan­dem­ic.

“What oth­er coun­try that you know that the Op­po­si­tion paid for, or­gan­ised night af­ter night, thou­sands of peo­ple to do ex­act­ly what the virus want­ed, which was to bring peo­ple to­geth­er in a pan­dem­ic,” he said.

“And who or­gan­ised that? It was or­gan­ised by the UNC, they or­gan­ised trans­port to bring peo­ple to venues.”

The last re­port­ed pub­lic vig­il for Bharatt was held on Feb­ru­ary 11 and some busi­ness­es vol­un­tar­i­ly closed the next day in sol­i­dar­i­ty.

The first ma­jor COVID-19 spike oc­curred in mid-April.

“All of you who want to know what hap­pened, go and ex­am­ine what hap­pened in March, that’s where the plan was de­railed,” he said but gave no oth­er de­tails.

Row­ley yes­ter­day al­so used his speak­ing time to cor­rect what he said were sev­er­al in­ac­cu­ra­cies pre­sent­ed by the Op­po­si­tion.

One of those in­ac­cu­ra­cies was whether he met with Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to dis­cuss a joint ef­fort to fight COVID-19.

Row­ley could not re­call which mem­ber of the Op­po­si­tion claimed that he nev­er re­spond­ed to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, or that the two had not met.

“What were the facts? On March 20, the very day that the re­quest was made, I, as Prime Min­is­ter, met here in my of­fice and I car­ried with me the Mem­ber for Arou­ca\Mal­oney and the Mem­ber for Port of Spain North\St Ann’s West and I met with the Mem­ber for Ca­roni East, the Op­po­si­tion leader and the Mem­ber for Fyz­abad,” he said.

“I can’t be­lieve how one of my col­leagues could call a press con­fer­ence to say one year lat­er there was no re­sponse. But that is the gist of what is be­ing pre­sent­ed here to­day.

“The Op­po­si­tion is tak­ing the po­si­tion to cre­ate doubt, cre­ate a new re­al­i­ty and give the im­pres­sion that there is some­thing else hap­pen­ing in T&T where the Gov­ern­ment is to be held ac­count­able.”

Row­ley said the on­ly thing to come out of that meet­ing was the Op­po­si­tion sug­gest­ing that the Gov­ern­ment buy a stock of hy­drox­y­chloro­quine, which has been re­port­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as a treat­ment for malar­ia and sug­gest­ed as a treat­ment for COVID-19.

Row­ley joked that if he ever mis­led the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives the way that Per­sad-Bisses­sar did, he would call on the Speak­er of the House to take him to his wife “Sharon Row­ley and pen­sion me off.”

He said while the Op­po­si­tion kept say­ing the Gov­ern­ment had no plan, it was the planned use of the par­al­lel health care sys­tem that was cur­rent­ly “sav­ing” the coun­try.

He al­so sought to cor­rect the is­sue of porous bor­ders, say­ing that there were over 200 places where il­le­gal mi­grants can ac­cess land in a small boat. He said the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices have been deal­ing with il­le­gal mi­grants but said that when they were tak­en to court, it was the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress lawyers who were there to de­fend them. “Talk­ing from all sides of their mouth, from the back of their necks all around on these mat­ters,” he said.

Row­ley said that the coun­try was do­ing “very well” in its fight against the pan­dem­ic. “We are con­fi­dent if we get the co-op­er­a­tion, es­pe­cial­ly from the peo­ple we an­tic­i­pate it from, we ex­pect num­bers would fall, the num­bers of deaths would fall,” he said.

The Mo­tion on Mat­ters per­tain­ing to the SoE did not re­quire Op­po­si­tion sup­port and yes­ter­day passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.