DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has hit back at Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for what they de­scribed as his dis­parag­ing re­marks about St Lu­cia op­po­si­tion leader Allen Chas­tanet.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray, St Au­gus­tine MP Khadi­jah Ameen and Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles took Dr Row­ley to task for call­ing Chas­tanet “Trop­i­cal Trump”.

At his first in­stall­ment of Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter for 2024 at the Skif­fle Bunch Pan The­atre in San Fer­nan­do on Tues­day night, Row­ley crit­i­cised the UNC for its part in the failed try at joint an­ti-crime talks be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion.

“But they (are) sit­ting down with Chas­tanet as if St Lu­cia, who had Chas­tanet in their gov­ern­ment to run their coun­try, throw him out of of­fice, un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly, but he in Trinidad to try to tell us how to run Trinidad. No thanks, trop­i­cal Trump!” Row­ley said.

Row­ley did not go in­to de­tails about the rea­son for the ti­tle be­stowed on Chas­tanet.

Yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said he had no idea why Row­ley dis­re­spect­ed Chas­tanet.

“To be treat­ed with that lev­el of dis­re­spect by the sit­ting Prime Min­is­ter to what re­al­ly was a for­mer Cari­com col­league is very dis­gust­ing but it is un­der­stand­able giv­en Dr Row­ley’s past with his lev­el of ar­ro­gance,” Mooni­lal said.

Ameen mean­while said Row­ley should stop pay­ing at­ten­tion to the UNC and fo­cus on his crime-fight­ing ef­forts.

“The ques­tion for Row­ley is what are you do­ing about crime? The Op­po­si­tion, we are en­gag­ing peo­ple, we are ask­ing peo­ple to come for­ward with so­lu­tions. This is re­al­ly Dr Row­ley’s job and he has failed tremen­dous­ly. Up to yes­ter­day we had a mur­der in the mid­dle of Port-of-Spain, our cap­i­tal city. How does that bode for busi­ness, how does that bode for tourism when tourists can be robbed in the mid­dle of Port-of-Spain walk­ing down a main street?”

Charles chid­ed Row­ley for at­tempt­ing to tell the UNC who it can and can­not align with, adding the PM ap­pears to be stand­ing in the way of progress.

Af­ter hear­ing about Row­ley’s crit­i­cism, Chas­tanet is­sued a state­ment re­it­er­at­ing his be­lief that crime is not a na­tion­al but re­gion­al is­sue. He said his sug­ges­tions at the UNC’s an­ti-crime talks in San­gre Grande on Mon­day were not meant to be tak­en as a per­son­al at­tack against Row­ley.

“One of the ways this re­gion can ef­fec­tive­ly deal with the scourge of crime and the crip­pling ef­fects it is hav­ing on our econ­o­my, so­ci­ety and ul­ti­mate­ly our peo­ple, is to tack­le it to­geth­er. It is clear that in­di­vid­ual ap­proach­es are not work­ing. I urge the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, who is al­so the lead Prime Min­is­ter on crime in Cari­com, to take my re­marks in the spir­it in which they were in­tend­ed – which was not an in­di­vid­ual crit­i­cism but rather a col­lec­tive call to ac­tion,” Chas­tanet said.

At the UNC’s an­ti-crime talks, Chas­tanet had ad­vo­cat­ed for a sin­gle or­gan­i­sa­tion of op­po­si­tion lead­ers from across the re­gion to rep­re­sent cit­i­zens who did not vote for their re­spec­tive gov­ern­ments. He al­so cham­pi­oned calls for a tax to be levied to fi­nance a Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS) to com­bat crime.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Chas­tanet was in T&T on par­lia­men­tary busi­ness for his coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to Paray, he and Chas­tanet par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Com­mon­wealth Par­lia­men­tary As­so­ci­a­tion (CPA) meet­ing on Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tees across the re­gion. He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar sub­se­quent­ly in­vit­ed him to par­tic­i­pate in the an­ti-crime talks.

Mean­while, the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) al­so raised con­cern over Row­ley’s la­belling of Chas­tanet. NTA leader Gary Grif­fith, in a state­ment, urged the Prime Min­is­ter to tread light­ly, as his geopo­lit­i­cal views could neg­a­tive­ly im­pact T&T.

“If Chas­tanet and (Don­ald) Trump re­turn to of­fice, and, un­for­tu­nate­ly, Row­ley re­mains in pow­er, how would this im­pact diplo­mat­ic and trade re­la­tions be­tween our na­tion and theirs? Would Row­ley at­tempt to down­play the un­war­rant­ed at­tack as a joke dur­ing meet­ings with these lead­ers? How would Chas­tanet and Trump re­ceive Row­ley, es­pe­cial­ly if dis­cus­sions were held in their re­spec­tive coun­tries?”

Grif­fith fur­ther ac­cused Row­ley of be­ing bit­ter to­wards any­one who does not align with his rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).