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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Rowley: I will fight like a Tiger to protect my name

by

Rhondor Dowlat-Rostant
2090 days ago
20191017
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley at I95.5FM earlier in October

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley at I95.5FM earlier in October

Office of the Prime Minister

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he has “no fear...I will have my day in Court with Roodal Mooni­lal and all those who slan­der me.”

These were the words of the prime min­is­ter as he ap­peared on I95.5 FM’s Take Two Thurs­day pro­gramme yes­ter­day break­ing his si­lence on al­le­ga­tions be­ing made against him by the op­po­si­tion MP.

Dr Row­ley said Mooni­lal and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar have set about to im­pli­cate him in cor­rup­tion with A & V Drilling “sim­ply be­cause I know the man.”

“Roodal Mooni­lal slan­dered me in the worst way. Three times he came to the Par­lia­ment, on the sec­ond oc­ca­sion he came to The Par­lia­ment try­ing to slan­der me. He brought a doc­u­ment, a false doc­u­ment...show­ing bank ac­count num­ber, my name on it...he could do that in­side the Par­lia­ment. He is abus­ing Par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege but then he came out­side the Par­lia­ment and lift­ed that priv­i­lege and I sued him im­me­di­ate­ly, “ Row­ley said.

“While that is so, what’s worst is that he comes back to the Par­lia­ment again in this Bud­get De­bate and does not say a word about the bud­get, 53 bil­lion dol­lars of ex­pen­di­ture, the man did not say a word but he com­ing back again with doc­u­ments pur­port­ing to be bank trans­ac­tions with my name on it and he and his min­ions on Face­book are out there try­ing to give the im­pres­sion that not on­ly as the last PM, pre­vi­ous PMs were thieves but that this one is this too but I can tell the peo­ple of T & T to have no fear I will have my day in Court with Roodal Mooni­lal and all those who slan­der me be­cause the one thing I know I in­tend to fight like a Tiger to pro­tect, for me, my chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, my good name...long as you slan­der me I am go­ing to take you to Court, “ he added.

Dur­ing the Oropouche East MP’s bud­get con­tri­bu­tion he al­leged a “tan­gled web” in­volv­ing wire trans­fers, clan­des­tine meet­ings and se­cret sign­ing of doc­u­ments all hav­ing to do with the sale of the re­fin­ery to the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU).

Al­though Dr Mooni­lal made no men­tion of cer­tain play­ers he al­lud­ed to a place in Pe­nal and al­so showed a doc­u­ment with the Prime Min­is­ter’s name on it.

On the is­sue of A & V Drilling and Petrotrin, Row­ley said the ac­tion tak­en by Petrotrin was pre­cip­i­tate and can­not be sup­port­ed by facts. He said the con­tract be­tween A&V Drilling and Petrotrin has pro­vi­sions for ar­bi­tra­tion.

Last week A&V Drilling’s at­tor­neys Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj SC, Prakash Ra­mad­har and oth­ers held a press con­fer­ence. He said what was dis­closed doesn’t sur­prise him.

“Petrotrin in­ter­nal re­port says that it al­ways had a prob­lem with in­ter­nal mea­sure­ment. I saw a re­port where that is­sue there was a rec­om­men­da­tion for the dis­ci­plin­ing of staff...I have noth­ing to say.”

The prime min­is­ter al­so sought to ad­dress the is­sue in re­la­tion to a com­pa­ny in­volved in a drug which caused sev­en pa­tients to go blind in ei­ther one eye or both eyes - a sto­ry that was first re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly in the Sun­day Guardian on Oc­to­ber 6.

Dr Row­ley said he didn’t know much but said he is ex­pect­ing and hopes that the com­pa­ny be­hind the im­por­ta­tion of the drug could be iden­ti­fied.

“The oth­er as­pect...if deemed com­ing in il­le­gal, the il­le­gal­i­ty needs to be de­ter­mined if ac­ci­den­tal or crim­i­nal­i­ty...clear­ly if such a per­son can be iden­ti­fied as they ought to be be­cause some­body ad­min­is­tered the drug, it had to come from some­where...I am wait­ing to hear from the Min­is­ter of Health and the Le­gal De­part­ment, “ Row­ley said.

Back in Ju­ly, the Min­istry of Health re­called the im­port­ed in­jec­tion which con­tained Tri­am­cineclone Ace­tonide as its main in­gre­di­ent.

In the past four months, the sev­en pa­tients have un­der­gone eye re­moval surgery and are cur­rent­ly be­ing out­fit­ted with pros­thet­ic glass eyes.


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