Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has chal­lenged Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to pro­vide ev­i­dence sup­port­ing her claim that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) head­quar­ters was built with “drug mon­ey.”

Dr Row­ley, ex­press­ing out­rage over the al­le­ga­tion, used strong lan­guage to de­scribe the Prime Min­is­ter’s char­ac­ter. “I want to say to Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to­day, I told this coun­try be­fore that you’re a jamette,” he said.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar stat­ed, “The PNM hi­er­ar­chy fat­tened their pock­ets from their lo­cal drug mafia fi­nanciers while the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go suf­fered. A short dis­tance away, the new blood-red Bal­isi­er House stands as a grave­stone to drug mon­ey, pae­dophil­ia, and theft.”

Re­spond­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at his Diego Mar­tin home, Row­ley said, “If they can’t come in front of me and show an io­ta of ev­i­dence to sup­port that al­le­ga­tion, I say again that we are un­for­tu­nate to have a jamette as the prime min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go. On­ly a jamette would make such a state­ment with­out pro­vid­ing a mod­icum of proof or truth. You could go in­side Par­lia­ment and say that.”

On the pae­dophil­ia al­le­ga­tion, Row­ley added, “You sup­port the poli­cies of Wash­ing­ton. Are you sup­port­ing the Ep­stein files be­ing hid­den?” He al­so not­ed that a mem­ber of her Sen­ate faced al­le­ga­tions of hu­man traf­fick­ing but was still re­ward­ed with a gov­ern­ment min­istry.

Row­ley ar­gued that the UNC should fo­cus on ac­quir­ing their own head­quar­ters in­stead of rent­ing spaces.

Ex­plain­ing how the new Bal­isi­er House was fi­nanced, Dr Row­ley said the funds came from par­ty mem­bers.

He said, “If you could pay $10, pay $10. If you could pay $15, $20, some mem­bers helped with that. We had mem­bers who were wealthy and well-off who said, ‘I’ll help you with that.’”

He added that mon­ey was al­so raised through raf­fles ap­proved by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, al­low­ing the par­ty to raise $15 mil­lion over sev­er­al years.

“To get the mon­ey, you had to sell the tick­ets. We did that, and we didn’t do it in one year. There were a num­ber of raf­fles we had,” he said.

Row­ley in­sist­ed that ac­cu­sa­tions of fun­nelling drug mon­ey to build PNM head­quar­ters are base­less. “When peo­ple talk about the PNM like that, they know noth­ing about the par­ty or what it stands for,” he said.

“Mem­bers of their par­ty should ask: where are your head­quar­ters? Where was your ef­fort for the last 15 years to get a par­ty head­quar­ters? Your par­ty is so many years old? We han­dle things dif­fer­ent­ly.”

He added that five per cent of his salary went to­ward build­ing Bal­isi­er House while he served as Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader.

While the PNM has not re­leased an au­dit­ed re­ceipt for the project, ini­tial es­ti­mates in 2018 put the build­ing’s cost be­tween $12.5 mil­lion and $25 mil­lion.

Re­spond­ing to Row­ley’s com­ments yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said, “Same dis­tort­ed nar­ra­tive for decades. What’s new?”