Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

As Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley of­fi­cial­ly steps down from lead­er­ship af­ter a decade at the helm, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts have weighed in on his lega­cy, with one giv­ing him a fail­ing grade.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad not­ed that plagu­ing is­sues af­fect­ing se­cu­ri­ty and the econ­o­my were among the defin­ing and di­vi­sive as­pects of Dr Row­ley’s time in of­fice.

“It will be a fail­ing grade, maybe some­thing like three out of 10, it won’t be a pass­ing grade, too many things. I will be giv­ing points on man­age­ment of the econ­o­my, I think that was a fail­ure, man­age­ment of crime, fail­ure, for­eign ex­change, that has to do with the econ­o­my, al­so fail­ure.”

Dr Row­ley, who is of­fi­cial­ly step­ping down as Prime Min­is­ter to­mor­row, has led the coun­try through COVID-19, shifts in the en­er­gy sec­tor, as well as grow­ing con­cerns with crime and gun vi­o­lence.

Dur­ing a wide-rang­ing in­ter­view that was aired on Thurs­day evening, Dr Row­ley de­fend­ed his lega­cy and not­ed that he had done his best to steer the coun­try clear from cri­sis.

“I am not in the lega­cy busi­ness, you see thing about lega­cy and lega­cy and lega­cy, I’m not in that. I was in the busi­ness of say­ing this coun­try has been good to me. When I got in­to the po­lit­i­cal are­na, it was what I can do be­cause oth­er peo­ple be­fore me sac­ri­ficed. I wasn’t about run­ning to get the best-pay­ing job in the coun­try, be­cause I had of­fers to work for oil com­pa­nies, I chose not to do that, I worked for the state,” Row­ley said dur­ing the in­ter­view.

But Dr Ram­per­sad said while his re­silience must be recog­nised, Row­ley’s han­dling of press­ing is­sues has been a let­down.

“I can’t even think of one good thing, I’ve been rack­ing my brain in oth­er in­ter­views to think of one thing pos­i­tive and I can­not.”

Mean­while, Dr Win­ford James took par­tic­u­lar aim at Dr Row­ley’s han­dling of the coun­try’s ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.

“He has al­lowed young men and women to come out the sec­ondary school sys­tem, too many of them, with­out skills, can’t be em­ployed, and that can have an ef­fect on the crime we see­ing in the coun­try. I’m not say­ing it’s the on­ly thing but if young peo­ple don’t have skill sets they can sell, then what you think is go­ing to hap­pen?” Dr James said.

He fur­ther con­tend­ed that Dr Row­ley’s decade-long tenure may ul­ti­mate­ly be over­shad­owed by the un­re­solved crime cri­sis and the stag­na­tion of the econ­o­my.