DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has pushed back against what he calls a cam­paign of “mis­in­for­ma­tion and po­lit­i­cal re­vi­sion­ism”, de­fend­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s han­dling of the UWI Debe cam­pus, To­ba­go au­ton­o­my, and the school build­ing pro­gramme.

In a de­tailed Face­book post, Dr Row­ley chal­lenged re­cent pub­lic claims, par­tic­u­lar­ly by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, and ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of dis­tort­ing his­tor­i­cal facts.

Re­gard­ing the UWI Debe cam­pus, Dr Row­ley said the fa­cil­i­ty was de­vel­oped with­out a sus­tain­able fund­ing plan, be­com­ing a fi­nan­cial bur­den dur­ing a time of eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion when na­tion­al rev­enues dropped from $50 bil­lion to $38 bil­lion be­tween 2015 and 2019.

He al­so crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar for threat­en­ing to re­claim the cam­pus, which had been gift­ed to UWI dur­ing her ad­min­is­tra­tion. He sug­gest­ed that such rhetoric re­flects poor­ly on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­la­tion­ship with the re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tion.

“The cre­ation and ex­pan­sion of fac­ul­ties have been done on many oc­ca­sions in our var­i­ous ter­ri­to­ries and ex­cept for the Debe cam­pus, none has ever de­scend­ed in­to ac­ri­mo­ny, bac­cha­nal and lies about pa­ter­ni­ty,” he said.

“The rea­son be­ing, the Debe cam­pus was gift­ed to the uni­ver­si­ty in the form of in­fra­struc­ture for a law fac­ul­ty (which has since mor­phed in­to a full cam­pus in­clud­ing med­ical school) with­out the sus­tain­able, sub­stan­tial fund­ing to cov­er in­take and op­er­a­tions as trum­pet­ed by the mid­wife of this ad­ven­ture,” he added.

Dr Row­ley fur­ther stat­ed that the chal­lenges in fund­ing the Debe cam­pus were com­pound­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic be­tween 2019 and 2022. He said this led the gov­ern­ment to in­te­grate the cam­pus in­to its par­al­lel health sys­tem re­sponse.

“Thus the his­to­ry of this fa­cil­i­ty can be shown, as de­scribed, to have noth­ing to do with racism, gov­ern­ment de­lib­er­ate ne­glect and aban­don­ment or pol­i­tics. It has every­thing to do with its unique con­cept at birth and the un­for­tu­nate con­flu­ence of the fund­ing needs and its unique arrange­ments with­in a strug­gling UWI.”

Turn­ing to To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my, Dr Row­ley re­fut­ed claims by the Prime Min­is­ter that the au­ton­o­my bills had lapsed. He clar­i­fied that two bills were brought to Par­lia­ment un­der the PNM—one passed, while the oth­er, which re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty, failed due to lack of sup­port from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

“It was not a case of any bill be­ing made to lapse, it was a record­ed case of a vote be­ing tak­en, the UNC with­held its votes and the To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my Bill was thus de­feat­ed. It must al­so be said here that when these bills were be­ing de­bat­ed and cre­at­ed in To­ba­go the then chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don could not get a meet­ing with then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Biss­esar.

“It took the com­ing in­to be­ing of the PNM gov­ern­ment, which I led, to open the door, re­ceive the bills, take them to Par­lia­ment, sub­ject them to par­lia­men­tary scruti­ny and put that prod­uct to a vote which in the end on­ly the PNM sup­port­ed. There­fore, I will not sit and watch the coun­try’s his­tor­i­cal record be­ing dis­tort­ed as if we are all asleep.”

Dr Row­ley al­so re­spond­ed to claims that the PNM gov­ern­ment had shut down the school build­ing pro­gramme, stat­ing that his ad­min­is­tra­tion was forced to man­age a $2.4 bil­lion fi­nan­cial chal­lenge. He crit­i­cised the Op­po­si­tion, led by Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, for re­main­ing silent on the is­sue.

“I leave the facts of that $2.4 bil­lion chal­lenge to be de­scribed and pre­sent­ed by the PNM when it choos­es to be the Op­po­si­tion. The nec­es­sary facts are all there.”