Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he has been "abused" and threat­ened" af­ter for­mer trans­port min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj shared Row­ley's cell­phone num­ber on so­cial me­dia.

Ma­haraj post­ed Row­ley's pri­vate cell num­ber on What­sApp and Face­book and en­cour­aged peo­ple to call the Prime Min­is­ter about the sea-bridge prob­lems. He al­so shared a sto­ry from a dis­traught moth­er, who said she mes­saged Row­ley about her daugh­ter's mur­der but was blocked by the Prime Min­is­ter.

In a me­dia state­ment yes­ter­day Row­ley said he was now forced to change his cell num­ber.

Row­ley said af­ter Ma­haraj shared his num­ber and in­cit­ed peo­ple to call him, he was sub­ject­ed "not on­ly to abuse but of threat­en­ing be­hav­iour which war­rant­ed the in­volve­ment of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice".

Row­ley called Ma­haraj a "low life" and de­scribed his ac­tions as "reck­less and dan­ger­ous be­hav­iour".

"This be­ing the times in which we live and the tech­nol­o­gy avail­able to the lowlifes like Mr Ma­haraj I have no choice but to ac­cess and use an­oth­er num­ber which you will be­come fa­mil­iar with in the nor­mal de­cent way," he said.

He said that since Fri­day, De­cem­ber 7, 2018, Ma­haraj "ob­tained" that cell num­ber and "ma­li­cious­ly pub­lished it".

"Fur­ther he has en­cour­aged and in­cit­ed per­sons to ha­rass and threat­en me," Row­ley said.

Row­ley said that giv­en the state of the coun­try, enough "un­for­tu­nates" could be mis­guid­ed by Ma­haraj

"As a re­sult of this act of gross mis­con­duct and in my de­sire to serve you in a sane and sober man­ner I re­gret that I will be dis­con­tin­u­ing the use of the num­ber that you might have known and used at some time in the past," Row­ley said.

He said he was "sad­dened" to change the num­ber he has had for years.

"I al­ways felt con­nect­ed to you just as an or­di­nary cit­i­zen whose phone num­ber was wide­ly known and avail­able to the re­spon­si­ble pub­lic," he said.

"For very many years, I have main­tained the same tele­phone num­ber. Up­on as­sum­ing of­fice, I con­tin­ued to keep that same num­ber and used it ef­fec­tive­ly for pri­vate and pub­lic busi­ness. Very many of you mem­bers of the pub­lic have used that num­ber, ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, in your mo­ments of need or sim­ply to wish me well on a dai­ly ba­sis," Row­ley said in a me­dia state­ment yes­ter­day.

"I trust that our coun­try nev­er be­comes so bar­ren that there is an ab­sence of lead­er­ship in all quar­ters, es­pe­cial­ly the po­lit­i­cal are­na, where rogue el­e­ments who try to drag us down to their base lev­els can be round­ly con­demned. I so do," he said.

Grif­fith: Po­lice in­ves­ti­gat­ing

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day con­firmed that he re­ceived a re­port from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley about sev­er­al mes­sages on his cell phone.

"I have re­ceived a re­port of a mat­ter where­by some­one ac­quired ac­cess to the tele­phone num­ber of the PM and sent sev­er­al mes­sages, which war­rants the po­lice in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter," Grif­fith said.

BOX


''De­vant ir­re­spon­si­ble, de­struc­tive'

"Ir­re­spon­si­ble, de­plorable and de­struc­tive".

For­mer min­is­ter of trans­port De­vant Ma­haraj has once again been chas­tised by the Gov­ern­ment, this time for shar­ing the PM's cell phone num­ber and en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to call him to com­plain about the fail­ure of the in­ter-is­land fer­ry.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said Ma­haraj was in­cit­ing peo­ple to use the PM's num­ber to "ha­rass" him.

Over the past two days, Ma­haraj be­gan by shar­ing the sto­ry of a heart­bro­ken moth­er, 35-year old Akins James whose daugh­ter's body was found on No­vem­ber 18, 2018, at San­ta Bar­bara Boule­vard, Up­per San­ta Cruz.

Ac­cord­ing to James' Face­book post, she con­tact­ed the Prime Min­is­ter seek­ing jus­tice for her 19-year old daugh­ter Amy Leslie James.

She said he nev­er re­spond­ed and then blocked her on What­sApp.

Yes­ter­day Young con­demned Ma­haraj for shar­ing Row­ley's num­ber.

Young said that Ma­haraj "has once again en­gaged in ir­re­spon­si­ble, de­plorable and de­struc­tive be­hav­iour de­signed to desta­bilise the good gov­er­nance of Trinidad and To­ba­go".

Young said that the pub­li­ca­tion of Row­ley's num­ber by Ma­haraj was "all-time low and wor­thy of crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion".

"He has con­tin­ued in­cit­ing peo­ple to use the Prime Min­is­ter’s in­for­ma­tion to, at a min­i­mum, ha­rass the Prime Min­is­ter and at a max­i­mum, ex­pose him to harm," he said.

Young linked Ma­haraj to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and said he was en­gag­ing in "de­spi­ca­ble and dan­ger­ous be­hav­iour for some time now".

"I con­sid­er his re­cent ac­tions to be dan­ger­ous and a clear in­di­ca­tion of the Op­po­si­tion’s des­per­a­tion and con­fir­ma­to­ry of the type of de­struc­tive ac­tions that they, and in par­tic­u­lar he, en­gages in," Young said.

"It is plain­ly wrong and even dan­ger­ous to cir­cu­late, pub­licly, the pri­vate in­for­ma­tion of any cit­i­zen, and that in­cludes pub­lic of­fi­cers," he said.

De­vant: What makes Row­ley so spe­cial?

But Ma­haraj does not think he has done any­thing wrong.

"As a pub­lic fig­ure, you no longer can claim pri­va­cy. I as the min­is­ter had peo­ple call­ing me when bus­es were late...I nev­er whined or moaned about it. It comes with the job. Even to­day as I get calls at home or on my cell or peo­ple just show­ing up at my home for help or ad­vice. This is with­out me be­ing a mem­ber of Par­lia­ment or Sen­ate or UNC Ex­ec­u­tive," he said.

"What makes Row­ley so spe­cial? When you of­fer your­self to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the pub­lic, it can't on­ly be in the con­ve­nient of­fice hours or tele­phone con­tacts. I know that (for­mer prime min­is­ter) Kam­la (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) and many oth­er op­po­si­tion MPs are equal­ly ac­ces­si­ble," he said.

Ma­haraj said he was "moved" to re­lease Row­ley's num­ber giv­en the fail­ures of the Galleons Pas­sage.

"Now it is break­ing down at sea putting na­tion­als' lives at risk," he said.

"Al­so the plea of Ms Akin James de­mand that the State in­ter­venes to en­sure that this poor la­dy gets jus­tice for the rape of her daugh­ter," Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj al­so de­nied that he is guilty of sedi­tion in the shar­ing of Row­ley's num­ber.

"Re­gard­ing the sedi­tion is­sue, I have my at­tor­neys look­ing at this nev­er-end­ing threat by the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion against cit­i­zens," Ma­haraj said.

"I want to chal­lenge the ar­cha­ic law that has al­ready been struck down in the Unit­ed King­dom by the Privy Coun­cil as un­con­sti­tu­tion­al," he said.

Ma­haraj said he was not sure if any­one even tried to con­tact Row­ley.

James: PM blocked me

Akin James, in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said it was not Ma­haraj who gave her Row­ley's num­ber.

She said she got his num­ber from a friend and tried to con­tact him seek­ing jus­tice for her daugh­ter.

James, in a brief in­ter­view yes­ter­day, de­scribed a cy­cle of pover­ty and sex­u­al abuse that end­ed in the un­solved death of her 19-year-old daugh­ter, Amy Leslie James.

The body of the younger James was found in an ad­vanced state of de­com­po­si­tion on No­vem­ber 18, 2018, in San­ta Cruz.

"She wasn't per­fect, and we were poor, I had her when I was about 15 or 16," James said.

She said two male rel­a­tives raped her daugh­ter at dif­fer­ent times and both times a re­port was made to the po­lice.

"Noth­ing came of it. When you poor and un­e­d­u­cat­ed, no­body does any­thing for you," she said.

"But this is my child, and some­body kill she and I have to get jus­tice for her," James said.

She said that two male rel­a­tives were held for the sex­u­al at­tack on her daugh­ter. One in­ci­dent oc­curred when the daugh­ter was eight, and an­oth­er at­tack hap­pened when the daugh­ter was 9.

"Rape for some rea­son is a bail­able of­fence in this coun­try. Don't ask me why, cause is we that does have to live with what hap­pened to us," she said.

James said the rape case was on­ly now be­fore the courts.

"Some­body kill her to keep her qui­et," James said.

"Po­lice say that the vic­tim is dead so the case is dead and I feel that in my bel­ly. This is my child and they telling me that noth­ing go­ing to hap­pen to the peo­ple who rape her when she was young and kill her now?

"Peo­ple say­ing I crazy and I should leave this alone...but I am a moth­er, and I need jus­tice," she said.

James' daugh­ter was re­port­ed miss­ing two weeks be­fore hunters dis­cov­ered her body. Of­fi­cers who re­spond­ed said the body was found in a crouched po­si­tion with a plas­tic bag over the head. Fe­male cloth­ing was found near­by.