RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

De­fend­ing his de­ci­sion to en­dorse me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Hans Des Vi­gnes as the nom­i­nee for Diego Mar­tin West when he de­parts, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day ac­cused the me­dia of mak­ing mis­chief by delv­ing in­to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) in­ter­nal par­ty mat­ters and call­ing him out for en­dors­ing a can­di­date as head of the par­ty’s screen­ing com­mit­tee.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the open­ing of the City Heights Mod­el Apart­ment Com­plex at Co­coyea, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley said, “I am of the view that I am a func­tion­ing mem­ber of a par­ty group in Diego Mar­tin West of the PNM, and if some­one could show me where I lose my right in my par­ty group to choose a nom­i­nee... then I would ac­cede.”

Pressed about a po­ten­tial con­flict of in­ter­est due to his en­dorse­ment of Des Vi­gnes, Row­ley said, “From what? Why should I? As a mat­ter of fact, I should—on­ly when you want to make mis­chief. We had so many events, and you were not there. When you get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make mis­chief, you are busy like a bee.”

He turned to an­oth­er mem­ber of the me­dia who chal­lenged him on the is­sue of con­flict of in­ter­est, say­ing, “I am a mem­ber of the par­ty group—it has a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to nom­i­nate one per­son. I don’t know that I have pre­vent­ed any­body from be­ing nom­i­nat­ed. What is your prob­lem, is­sue, or con­cern—ex­cept to make mis­chief? PNM mem­bers are smarter than that. This is in­ter­fer­ence to cre­ate mis­chief.”

He not­ed that the PNM con­sti­tu­tion is clear.

“We have a con­sti­tu­tion. You (the me­dia) do not be­long to any PNM par­ty group, but you are con­cerned and at­tempt­ing to make a na­tion­al is­sue out of my com­ment, which I made in my con­stituen­cy, in my par­ty group, where I have a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right. The word ‘de­mo­c­ra­t­ic’ al­ways comes up, and ap­par­ent­ly, I have lost mine.”

He added: “Maybe I might say, ‘Don’t nom­i­nate any­body,’ be­cause the me­dia might say there is a con­flict. Since when are you so in­ter­est­ed in PNM busi­ness?”

Al­so asked for com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion, San Fer­nan­do West MP and mem­ber of the PNM screen­ing com­mit­tee, Faris Al-Rawi, said he didn’t hear what the Prime Min­is­ter ac­tu­al­ly said about Des Vi­gnes or whether Des Vi­gnes was of­fi­cial­ly en­dorsed by Dr Row­ley.

“This is pol­i­tics, and it has its sea­son. I am a mem­ber of the screen­ing com­mit­tee, and we will go through the process­es, which will be fair and trans­par­ent in front of the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive, so all per­sons are screened as they al­ways are, in prop­er ex­pec­ta­tion,” Al-Rawi said.

Des Vi­gnes, 39, a busi­ness­man, me­dia per­son­al­i­ty and a di­rec­tor of IGOVTT, has a mas­ter’s de­gree in busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion—lead­er­ship, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and in­no­va­tion.

Par­ty in­sid­ers said he had been a front-run­ner for the seat since Jan­u­ary.

On Jan­u­ary 3, Row­ley con­firmed that he in­tend­ed to bow out of pol­i­tics af­ter 45 years, and as such, the par­ty would have to seek a new can­di­date for Diego Mar­tin West. Row­ley has been Diego Mar­tin West MP for the past 33 years.