There was ev­i­dence in Tues­day’s protests in Port-of-Spain of peo­ple with po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions as­so­ci­at­ing with crim­i­nal el­e­ments - and what was an­tic­i­pat­ed by protest or­gan­is­ers was a far worse sit­u­a­tion than what oc­curred. How­ev­er, po­lice did their job to pre­vent or­gan­is­ers from per­pe­trat­ing a worse sit­u­a­tion.

This was the word from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence called specif­i­cal­ly to ad­dress the protests, Row­ley said what was seen was spon­ta­neous and spo­radic fires and an “in your face” re­sponse to po­lice, which was all or­gan­ised.

How­ev­er, he said pri­or to Tues­day se­cu­ri­ty forces had gath­ered in­for­ma­tion that the sit­u­a­tion was be­ing or­gan­ised by peo­ple known to po­lice. He said while there’s a dif­fer­ence be­tween in­for­ma­tion and ev­i­dence, the in­for­ma­tion they had made them aware of what was be­ing or­gan­ised and who was or­gan­is­ing it.

“I trust that in­for­ma­tion will evolve in­to ev­i­dence so that peo­ple who threat­ened na­tion­al safe­ty and well be­ing will be brought to jus­tice—some­time, some­where,” Row­ley said.

Whether it was due to po­lit­i­cal in­volve­ment, he said, “I don’t want to speak for po­lice but what I can say is, in this sit­u­a­tion and pri­or ones, there’s ev­i­dence of peo­ple with po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions as­so­ci­at­ing with crim­i­nal el­e­ments. That ev­i­dence ex­ists. How it’s used is an­oth­er sto­ry, how suc­cess­ful they are is an­oth­er sto­ry and who they are is a mat­ter for the po­lice.”

He said he’d ob­tained in­for­ma­tion from state agen­cies which shared it with him.

“In this case, there was some pri­or in­for­ma­tion and it turned out the in­for­ma­tion was cor­rect,” he said.

Row­ley said he’d been in To­ba­go on Mon­day for the fu­ner­al of his best friend (PNM’s Neil Wil­son). Mon­day was al­so his 35th wed­ding an­niver­sary “to the same woman.” But he said he re­turned to Trinidad on Mon­day night and was mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion on Tues­day, present all along. He said he al­lowed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to speak on the protests. He met with se­cu­ri­ty heads on Tues­day night but didn’t “run out in the first hour and try to talk.”

Row­ley al­so re­called the 2004 at­tempt by the PNM gov­ern­ment to have a plan for un­der­per­form­ing in­ner-city youths who could fall prey to crim­i­nal el­e­ments. But he said it was halt­ed due to per­cep­tion of favour­ing some. He not­ed peo­ple like UNC’s Wade Mark and oth­ers had spo­ken out against the plan for black youths. He said even some of his own col­leagues in Bud­get de­bate on the is­sue had claimed it was a mis­take on a doc­u­ment page.

The PM said he de­fend­ed the pro­gramme but was ac­cused of be­ing racist and de­fend­ing black peo­ple. He said it wasn’t fash­ion­able then to have such a plan and there was no Black Lives Mat­ter lob­by or peo­ple talk­ing about George Floyd’s mur­der in the US. There­fore, he said when the UNC’s leader re­cent­ly crit­i­cised about what the PNM had done in con­stituen­cies, he want­ed to re­mind her of the crit­i­cism her col­league Mark had de­liv­ered 16 years ago on the PNM’s plan for such ar­eas.