SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Apolo­getic and em­bar­rassed.

That's how po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James summed up Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's re­sponse to the coun­try's soar­ing crime sit­u­a­tion in a 90-minute in­ter­view at White Hall which was aired on Sun­day.

The prime min­is­ter was ques­tioned on sev­er­al is­sues, rang­ing from crime, econ­o­my, the per­for­mance of his Cab­i­net since as­sum­ing of­fice and the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na.

Touch­ing on crime which has be­come a thorn in the side of the rul­ing Gov­ern­ment, James said Row­ley ad­mit­ted that his ad­min­is­tra­tion had tried its best to bring the crime lev­els and mur­der rate down.

"In fact, he was apolo­getic in his an­swers. In the mat­ter of crime, for sure, and the in­abil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to re­duce it to ac­cept­able lev­els. I think he was dis­ap­point­ed that de­spite his very good ef­forts the prob­lem keeps es­ca­lat­ing. I think there was dis­ap­point­ment that his Gov­ern­ment could not reign in crime in the way he would have want­ed to. I think there was a lit­tle em­bar­rass­ment as well," James said.

Row­ley ad­mit­ted that his Gov­ern­ment was fac­ing an on­go­ing crime wave and hoped that the pop­u­la­tion will not judge fair­ly based on their over­all per­for­mance as his ad­min­is­tra­tion pre­pares to ask the pop­u­la­tion for an­oth­er term in of­fice.

James said cit­i­zens will de­ter­mine the Gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions.

"The pop­u­la­tion will de­cide whether we agree with your as­sess­ment, Dr Row­ley! What he was say­ing is gives us an­oth­er term in of­fice. We are on a good path. Look at some of the good things we have done."

In ret­ro­spect, James said Row­ley did not "con­cede fail­ure" but one of "re­gret."

He said the PM point­ed out that de­spite mak­ing some tough de­ci­sions, he was gen­er­al­ly pleased with his Gov­ern­ment's over­all per­for­mance.

How­ev­er, James said some of Row­ley's an­swers to the tough ques­tions were "vague and not spe­cif­ic."

Will cit­i­zens see the Gov­ern­ment's man­age­ment as a suc­cess head­ing in­to a gen­er­al elec­tion?

James said PNM sup­port­ers will ac­cept Row­ley as their leader while oth­ers will not sup­port him.

"That is the po­lar­i­sa­tion I am talk­ing about. I can't say if the pub­lic, in gen­er­al, will buy in­to Row­ley's ar­gu­ment on the eco­nom­ic front and re­turn his ad­min­is­tra­tion to pow­er."

In the in­ter­view, Row­ley ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with for­mer min­is­ters Dar­ryl Smith who was ac­cused of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and Mar­lene Mc Don­ald who was ar­rest­ed last Au­gust on sev­en cor­rup­tion charges.

James felt Row­ley was "too ac­com­mo­dat­ing of Smith and Mc Don­ald," stat­ing that he gave Mc Don­ald three chances

"He could not go fur­ther with her."

James said he did not have suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion to speak about So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is' bank trans­ac­tions.

Row­ley said Robin­son-Reg­is would stay in his Cab­i­net un­til there is a change in the facts be­fore him.

Al­so weigh­ing in on the in­ter­view was po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Prof John La Guerre.

La Guerre said the PM should have been much more in­for­ma­tive and forth­com­ing with his an­swers.

"I think there are some de­fi­cien­cies some­where that he did not iden­ti­fy or could not iden­ti­fy. The mes­sage con­veyed to the pop­u­la­tion on crime was to be le­nient with him in an elec­tion year and that he has been try­ing his best with some mar­gin­al suc­cess."

La Guerre be­lieved Row­ley should have told the coun­try far more about his Gov­ern­ment's crime-fight­ing plans to al­lay the pop­u­la­tion's grow­ing fears.

"The is­sue of crime and crime man­age­ment is bound to have an im­pact on the way peo­ple see their fu­ture. This mat­ter of crime in­volves life and limb and has been of con­cern to those who have been im­pact­ed one way or the oth­er."

On the flip side, La Guerre said the mes­sage sent to the pop­u­la­tion by Row­ley was one of "promise and that bet­ter days are ahead."

The fact that Row­ley stat­ed that his great­est fail­ure un­der his stew­ard­ship was not en­gi­neer­ing eco­nom­ic growth, La Guerre said the PM should have dis­cussed more of Gov­ern­ment's ex­pec­ta­tions and im­pact on the coun­try's "nat­ur­al gas re­serves and oil ex­plo­rations."

Many is­sues in the en­er­gy sec­tor, La Guerre said were left hang­ing.

He said it would be dif­fi­cult for the pop­u­la­tion to view the Gov­ern­ment's eco­nom­ic man­age­ment as a suc­cess fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Petrotrin's re­fin­ery, thou­sands fac­ing the bread­line and a string of busi­ness­es shut­ting down op­er­a­tions due to a de­cline in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

La Guerre said the PM's re­sponse to his Cab­i­net's per­for­mance was not one of glow­ing trib­ute to them.

"It was an ad­mis­sion that the Cab­i­net was not per­form­ing as he would have liked them to per­form."