DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

As the coun­try grap­ples with a mur­der rate of 408, which is 10 deaths shy of the fig­ure record­ed at the same time last year, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has re­fused to rate the per­for­mance of Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

Dr Row­ley was asked his thoughts on the crime sit­u­a­tion and the mur­der rate dur­ing an in­ter­view at the cock­tail re­cep­tion in the Ro­tun­da of the Red House fol­low­ing the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the Fourth Ses­sion of the 12th Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

“As you would have ob­served, I have not joined that con­ver­sa­tion of count­ing mur­ders—and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter works with me and I un­der­stand what he is do­ing, what we are do­ing, and what the na­tion’s prob­lem is so I’m not go­ing to join that con­ver­sa­tion of mea­sur­ing one or two here or there be­cause if we have 10 mur­ders, that is 10 too many,” he said.

Dur­ing her maid­en speech in the Par­lia­ment, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo al­so urged mem­bers of both Hous­es to unite in the fight against crime.

Ad­dress­ing this, Dr Row­ley said the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will con­tin­ue to en­cour­age the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to put coun­try first, but he ex­pressed doubt that this would be pos­si­ble, cit­ing a par­lia­men­tar­i­an who dis­played less than ho­n­ourable be­hav­iour dur­ing the for­mal open­ing.

“What I saw to­day, a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment at­tempt­ing to in­sult the Pres­i­dent in the cham­ber, while she’s ad­dress­ing the na­tion, I don’t see that change,” Row­ley said.

“I would like to see it (col­lab­o­ra­tion on crime) but there are Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment who, as far as I’m con­cerned, are not pre­pared to see be­yond what they be­lieve is their prospect in the next elec­tion,” he added.

Al­though he did not name the po­lit­i­cal fig­ure, Guardian Me­dia cap­tured footage of Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts with his back turned for the du­ra­tion of the Pres­i­dent’s speech. When mem­bers of both sides stood at the end of her ad­dress, he al­so re­mained seat­ed un­til the na­tion­al an­them was played.

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter said he recog­nised the ur­gency of Kan­ga­loo’s call for uni­ty among politi­cians to com­bat crime, which re­mains a se­ri­ous is­sue.

“The Pres­i­dent is at­tuned to the fact that we have a very se­ri­ous crime prob­lem, and we have to keep work­ing at it, whether it is five things or fif­teen things, we do all that we can to get the bet­ter of the crim­i­nal el­e­ment,” he said.

On an­oth­er is­sue, Dr Row­ley, who called him­self a “pan afi­ciona­do”, said the Gov­ern­ment will “do what we can do” and seek le­gal ad­vice to­wards of­fi­cial­ly de­clar­ing the steel­pan the na­tion­al in­stru­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. He said his ad­min­is­tra­tion had al­ready in­vest­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in cre­at­ing fa­cil­i­ties, train­ing and in­tro­duc­ing the in­stru­ment in schools, as well as out­side of the coun­try.

Shift­ing his at­ten­tion to the Pres­i­dent’s ac­knowl­edge­ment that some peo­ple be­lieve par­lia­men­tar­i­ans should not be paid at all, Row­ley said it was a sen­ti­ment as old as time. He not­ed that par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in Trinidad and To­ba­go had not had a pay in­crease in the eight years since he has been in of­fice, which was a promise he kept.

With the Cab­i­net on a work­ing re­treat from last evening un­til Wednes­day, Row­ley shied away from com­ments on whether a Cab­i­net reshuf­fle was pend­ing.

Asked if he would dis­close any­thing about ru­mours of a reshuf­fle which sur­faced on so­cial me­dia re­cent­ly, Row­ley replied, “Are you avail­able for an ap­point­ment?” The PM then walked away with a smile.