Gail Alexan­der

UNC Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts has ques­tioned if Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has the “moral and spir­i­tu­al” au­thor­i­ty to ap­point a Pres­i­dent who could par­don Row­ley “if po­lice came knock­ing on his door.”

In his usu­al style, Roberts claimed Row­ley should be “in­ves­ti­gat­ed” for var­i­ous is­sues.

He slammed the board ap­point­ments of Ude­cott chair­man Noel Gar­cia –who he claimed was Row­ley’s “friend” - and al­so claimed Gar­cia was re­lat­ed to Pres­i­dent-des­ig­nate Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo.

Say­ing Gar­cia was in charge of bil­lions of dol­lars of tax­pay­ers’ funds, Roberts claimed:

“He who spends more is in greater risk of be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed if laws are bro­ken and if there are in­ves­ti­ga­tions un­der the num­ber one man in charge of all your mon­ey, and TTPS does work and charges are prof­fered.”

Not­ing pres­i­den­tial par­dons, Roberts ex­pressed con­cern, claim­ing there was a “big get-out-of-jail-free card sit­ting in the Pres­i­dent’s House be­cause your in-law is the Pres­i­dent.“

How­ev­er, Gar­cia yes­ter­day dis­missed Roberts’ state­ments as “Fool­ish­ness!”

Roberts said the UNC couldn’t stop Row­ley from putting Kan­ga­loo as Pres­i­dent. But Roberts ques­tioned the ap­point­ment “from Bal­isi­er House to Bal­isi­er House” and ac­cused Row­ley of “want­i­ng to thrust a sit­ting PNM card car­ry­ing hold­er on Pres­i­dent’s House to plant the Bal­isi­er House flag on top of Pres­i­dent’s House.”

Roberts al­so queried her per­for­mance in the Sen­ate.

Cit­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion on free­dom of speech, Roberts claimed she’d told him to “tone it down” on cer­tain de­bates and he was in­ter­rupt­ed 21 times in one half-hour.