Fix­in T&T founder Kirk Wait­he has built a name and a rep­u­ta­tion as a one-man cor­rup­tion-buster. In the past decade, he has chal­lenged suc­ces­sive prime min­is­ters to re­move taint­ed min­is­ters and fights to en­sure that he keeps them hon­est.

Just re­cent­ly, Wait­he shot to promi­nence again for seem­ing to get un­der the skin of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, but Wait­he said that was nev­er the in­ten­tion.

"The ob­jec­tive was nev­er to get un­der his skin or any­thing. Our ob­jec­tive is just the re­al­i­sa­tion of a se­cure, hap­py, healthy pro­duc­tive, ef­fi­cient T&T," he said.

Wait­he said the Prime Min­is­ter's seem­ing sur­prise that he (Wait­he) shared their ex­change with the re­porter was mis­placed.

"The Prime Min­is­ter seems to be sug­gest­ing that the text mes­sages we made pub­lic, he nev­er ex­pect­ed us to and it was sup­posed to be pri­vate. The on­ly rea­son we made it pub­lic was that the re­porter in­di­cat­ed to me that the Prime Min­is­ter sug­gest­ed to her that he has had con­ver­sa­tions with me on this is­sue via text.

"Those mes­sages are on my phone and he said she may want to speak with me about it. So it was in his di­rec­tion that we did that. The re­porter would not have known about the con­ver­sa­tion un­less he told her."

Wait­he said he was not sur­prised that Row­ley took that mis­lead­ing stance.

"I was not sur­prised. Dr Row­ley is un­for­tu­nate­ly what a tra­di­tion­al politi­cian has come to rep­re­sent in T&T. What Dr Row­ley has to un­der­stand is that he can­not and will not be al­lowed to de­ter­mine, se­lec­tive­ly, the parts of the con­ver­sa­tion he has with me to be made pub­lic. It's all or noth­ing," he said.

"And since Dr Row­ley has made it pub­lic, there is more that we will share."

Wait­he has tack­led cor­rupt politi­cians on both sides but re­fused to ad­mit which par­ty gave him more fod­der.

"I think both par­ties are two sides of the same filthy coin," he said.

"We've nev­er mea­sured but I think it's the same. Our stan­dard re­sponse when peo­ple say we are pro-PNM or an­ti-UNC is that we take folks to about 20 links or our Face­book page and you could see po­si­tions that we have tak­en be­tween 2010-2015," he said.

Wait­he and vot­ing for the PNM

Wait­he said that on the eve of the 2015 elec­tion, he wrote a let­ter to the ed­i­tor ex­plain­ing why he was vot­ing for the PNM.

"The prin­ci­pal rea­son is I be­lieved then as I do now that had the UNC won our democ­ra­cy would be in grave dan­ger. When your democ­ra­cy is erod­ed, you re­al­ly can­not work to fix any­thing. So it wasn't nec­es­sar­i­ly about the cor­rup­tion," he said.

"We do not cher­ry-pick our cam­paigns but we do have sev­er­al things on the radar and we can on­ly pur­sue when we have enough da­ta, enough in­for­ma­tion."

He said the Row­ley mat­ter, though, was a par­tic­u­lar dis­ap­point­ment.

"Dr Row­ley has been of a par­tic­u­lar dis­ap­point­ment for me. I had many in­ter­ac­tions with Dr Row­ley as leader of the Op­po­si­tion and I bought in­to his rhetoric be­cause that is what it turned out to be, of him be­ing just to­tal­ly trans­par­ent and com­mit­ted to good gov­er­nance," Wait­he said.

"I re­mem­ber ask­ing Dr Row­ley in one of our phone con­ver­sa­tions, I asked him about cam­paign fi­nance re­form and what the peo­ple who con­tributed to his cam­paign go­ing to get and he said good gov­er­nance. We have got­ten any­thing but that."

De­spite his abil­i­ty to get ac­cess to politi­cians and in­sti­gate change, Wait­he de­nies that he is in a unique po­si­tion or is lucky enough to move in the right cir­cles.

"I am not in any of those "cir­cles", but I be­lieve that re­la­tion­ships dri­ve life and com­mu­ni­ca­tion and trust dri­ve re­la­tion­ships. I have re­la­tion­ships with many peo­ple and I work re­al­ly hard to com­mu­ni­cate with them as ef­fec­tive­ly as I can. I am not in any cir­cles. I take a lime oc­ca­sion­al­ly in the (Queen's Park) Oval if my broth­er is there," he said.

Wait­he and the UNC

In the past ten years since Fix­in T&T's in­cep­tion, Wait­he has pi­lot­ed calls for the re­moval of then-at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. He and Ram­lo­gan clashed at the time, with Ram­lo­gan ac­cus­ing him of be­ing part of a broad­er PNM cam­paign to get him out of of­fice.

He has al­so cham­pi­oned calls for the re­moval of for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen when he was de­tained and ques­tioned by po­lice last year.

Wait­he and the PNM

In the past five years, Wait­he took on the cas­es of for­mer sports min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith, for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi.

"Dr Row­ley's han­dling of the Camille Robin­son-Reg­is sit­u­a­tion is painful­ly dis­ap­point­ing as was his han­dling of the mat­ter with the for­mer min­is­ter (Mc­Don­ald) that is now be­fore the courts," he said.

"His sup­port of Robin­son-Reg­is is con­sis­tent with how Dr Row­ley treats with sit­u­a­tions, much like his pre­de­ces­sor Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

"I say pub­licly that if you mask the faces and dis­tort the voic­es, you can't tell the dif­fer­ence with Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Kei­th Row­ley."

He said that Row­ley al­so con­tin­ues to de­fend Al-Rawi on the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in the mat­ter of his chil­dren hold­ing high-pow­ered ri­fles at the Reg­i­ment camp in Cu­mu­to.

"He ac­cused the army of tak­ing and leak­ing those pho­tographs in the ab­sence of ev­i­dence with the AG sit­ting right next to him," Wait­he said.

"The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, we be­lieve, mis­rep­re­sent­ed what hap­pened there as well. The AG was less than hon­est with how that whole sce­nario came about. We state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that the AG Faris Al-Rawi's re­la­tion­ship with the truth, is at best, painful­ly strained.

"There is the case with the Dar­ryl Smith mat­ter, look at what hap­pened with that...in ad­di­tion to the young woman who was vic­tim, there were then three fe­male vic­tims—the ones who took on the task of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion—and the Gov­ern­ment was in our view abu­sive to them in the way it was treat­ed."

Wait­he's pri­vate busi­ness

In the pub­lished ex­change with the Prime Min­is­ter, Row­ley ac­cused Wait­he of favour­ing the Bas­deo Pan­day-led UNC be­cause his pri­vate com­pa­ny, To­tal Con­ve­nience Man­age­ment (TCM) ben­e­fit­ed fi­nan­cial­ly un­der their watch.

It was re­port­ed back in 2016 that TCM ben­e­fit­ed from a lu­cra­tive car rental agree­ment with the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

"They were a client, now a for­mer client. What we did was give the HDC au­tho­ri­sa­tion to put any de­tails of the busi­ness we've con­duct­ed in the pub­lic do­main. The HDC has that au­tho­ri­sa­tion from us un­re­served­ly," he said.

When asked if his com­pa­ny has any arrange­ments with oth­er state agen­cies, Wait­he said, "Not that I am aware of."

How Fix­ing T&T is run

But pri­vate busi­ness aside, Fix­in T&T is run in a much dif­fer­ent man­ner—it has no bank ac­count and is fund­ing by Wait­he and his com­pa­ny.

"Fix­in T&T doesn't even have a bank ac­count, nev­er did. It's ba­si­cal­ly on­line and things like the plac­ards and oth­er things that have been done have been fund­ed by me and my com­pa­ny," he said.

"There might have been a cou­ple of small con­tri­bu­tions when we ran ads about the To­ba­go sea bridge and that fi­as­co, there are var­i­ous peo­ple who con­tributed a thou­sand here and a cou­ple thou­sand there. When we take mon­ey from peo­ple, we let them know that they are do­nat­ing this, con­tribut­ing this with the clear un­der­stand­ing that if ever we're asked, we have to be able to say John or Jane Doe con­tributed X and they're ok with that.

"For the most part, if since 2010 Fix­in T&T has spent $20,000 to $30,000 that is ex­or­bi­tant," he said, adding that a lot of the work of Fix­in T&T is free and on­line.

He said the peo­ple who help with Fix­in T&T would rather re­main anony­mous.

"Trinidad and To­ba­go is a small place where reprisal is re­al," he said.

"We re­ceive and then have to ver­i­fy the in­for­ma­tion. There are a lot of peo­ple in this coun­try that are hon­est and good and love this coun­try. A lot of peo­ple are al­so afraid. So we pro­vide a voice for those peo­ple and I am the face," he said.