Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@guardian.co.tt

The Prime Min­is­ter is warn­ing mem­bers of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) that he is pay­ing at­ten­tion to the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing a leaked au­dio clip in­volv­ing mem­bers of the As­sem­bly and there will be con­se­quences if they break the law.

“I stand on this plat­form as the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Dr Row­ley said, stress­ing on the “and” as he ad­dressed mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and par­ty mem­bers dur­ing Break­fast with Dr Kei­th Row­ley at the Hilton Trinidad, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day.

“If there are peo­ple in To­ba­go, 14 seats or 24 seats, and they want to go and plan to use tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey to run their par­ty of what­ev­er the name is, that is their busi­ness, un­til it be­comes a mat­ter of breach of the law.”

A mem­ber of the au­di­ence had asked the Prime Min­is­ter to com­ment on a voice note pur­port­ing to be­long to mem­bers of the THA dis­cussing a plan to hire peo­ple on a full-time ba­sis to spread po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da via so­cial me­dia us­ing THA funds.

THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and his ex­ec­u­tive have so far re­mained mum on the is­sue, al­though it has caused a furore in To­ba­go af­ter an au­dio record­ing of the dis­cus­sion was leaked on so­cial me­dia, with per­sons in sev­er­al quar­ters call­ing for con­fir­ma­tion of the in­di­vid­u­als in the video, res­ig­na­tions and the call­ing of fresh elec­tions due to the im­pli­ca­tions of pos­si­ble cor­rup­tion im­plied in the dis­cus­sion.

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley of­fered some ad­vice to his To­ba­go coun­ter­parts giv­en what has tran­spired.

“I do not say any­thing in the com­pa­ny of any­body with­out as­sum­ing they have a tape recorder in their pock­et, and they are tap­ing what I am say­ing.”

He gave mem­bers of the au­di­ence an anec­dote, where he was play­ing golf in a re­cent char­i­ty tour­na­ment in To­ba­go, and want­ed to uri­nate.

“We were hav­ing a few drinks and I got to a far part of the course and there was a lot of bush and no­body around and I thought of us­ing the bath­room and I said, no, you go by that bush there, I’ll have no idea whose cam­era is on me, I have to as­sume once I am out of my bed, some­body’s cam­era is on me and I don’t want the sur­prise pic­ture, that is to­day’s world.”

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter said he al­so does not want to give the im­pres­sion that he has let To­ba­go drift away.

“That will not hap­pen, and it is not hap­pen­ing, if there are con­se­quences to be paid, then they will be paid,” he not­ed.

Row­ley added that it does not mat­ter how pop­u­lar a politi­cian is in To­ba­go, the law will bring them to heel.

In fact, he said THA mem­bers are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing that right now.

“So, if in To­ba­go there are of­fi­cers who are pre­pared to break the law, they will face the law as is hap­pen­ing right now with the THA pub­licly an­nounc­ing they will break the law with re­spect to the EMA Act, and I can ad­vise you that the EMA un­der law has in­ter­vened in To­ba­go and stopped the project. And the EMA will take to the courts of Trinidad and To­ba­go, any and all per­sons who are prepar­ing to break the law in To­ba­go with re­spect to the EMA act.”

Last Fri­day, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad grant­ed an ex-parte in­junc­tion to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, which had com­plained in an emer­gency ap­pli­ca­tion that the req­ui­site ap­provals have not been grant­ed by them for the THA to con­duct road works along the Shir­van/Store Bay Lo­cal Con­nec­tor Road.