Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has heaped scorn on the tenure of out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, ac­cus­ing him of pre­sid­ing over a crime epi­dem­ic that cost thou­sands of in­no­cent lives, the col­lapse of the econ­o­my and over­all na­tion­al hard­ship.

“Kei­th Row­ley is end­ing his de­struc­tive near-decade-long tenure as Prime Min­is­ter with a lega­cy of woe­ful and deep-root­ed fail­ures that have pre­cip­i­tous­ly di­min­ished cit­i­zens’ qual­i­ty of life. He is the on­ly prime min­is­ter in our his­to­ry who has not made a sin­gle tan­gi­ble achieve­ment dur­ing his tenure,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day.

This, af­ter Row­ley yes­ter­day an­nounced he would re­sign as Prime Min­is­ter on March 16.

In a state­ment hours af­ter­wards, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “The im­me­di­ate goal must be to move past Row­ley’s wretched tenure, and the first mea­sure must be to sum­mon the na­tion to a gen­er­al elec­tion. The peo­ple are the na­tion’s rich­est and most prized re­source, and I am con­vinced that, with pur­pose and dili­gence, we can re­build af­ter the Row­ley dev­as­ta­tion.”

She added, “His­to­ry will re­call Row­ley as pre­sid­ing over an ever-wors­en­ing crime epi­dem­ic that cost thou­sands of in­no­cent lives, a cat­a­stroph­ic pub­lic health­care sys­tem, the col­lapse of the econ­o­my, grind­ing pover­ty, de­te­ri­o­rat­ed phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and over­all na­tion­al hard­ship.

“More than that, Row­ley will be de­fined by his poor work eth­ic, caus­tic man­ner, un­bound­ed ig­no­rance, and par­tial­i­ty to blam­ing oth­ers for his in­grained in­com­pe­tence.”

She added, “Even as he with­draws from a post for which he is ill-suit­ed, it is ev­i­dent that his re­tire­ment fol­lows close­ly on the heels of Don­ald Trump’s elec­tion as US Pres­i­dent. For years, Row­ley was warned that he was tak­ing our coun­try down a dan­ger­ous path­way in his deal­ings with the nar­co-traf­fick­ing regime of Nico­las Maduro. Yet, he per­sist­ed in deal­ings to aid the Maduro regime and lo­cal busi­ness in­ter­ests con­nect­ed to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said US au­thor­i­ties are al­ready tak­ing ac­tion against in­di­vid­u­als and en­ti­ties that have col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Maduro regime.

“OFAC is dead, along with oth­er Biden-era con­ces­sions to the Maduro gov­ern­ment,” she not­ed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­leged that Row­ley’s re­tire­ment “co­in­cid­ed with the eleventh-hour sus­pi­cious sale of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery to a com­pa­ny in­ter­na­tion­al­ly flagged for cor­rup­tion, and Row­ley seems to be set­ting the ground­work to flee the coun­try and the com­ing le­gal reper­cus­sions of his Venezue­lan deal­ings.”

She said Row­ley’s re­tire­ment “... ap­pears not to be about rid­ing off in­to the sun­set but about flee­ing the mess he’s land­ed him­self in with his deal­ings with the dic­ta­to­r­i­al, klep­to­crat­ic, drug-traf­fick­ing Maduro regime. His hand-picked suc­ces­sor, Min­is­ter Young, who worked as the fa­cil­i­ta­tor of these deals, will soon face the same puni­tive fate as Row­ley.”

She ac­cused Row­ley’s Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my over the last 10 years.

“They’ve tak­en T&T from be­ing the re­gion’s en­er­gy hub to now ex­port­ing scrap iron for forex.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem had al­so fall­en in­to cri­sis.

“He took away lap­tops, GATE op­por­tu­ni­ties and schol­ar­ships from our young peo­ple but gave them le­galised mar­i­jua­na to smoke. Row­ley’s poli­cies de­stroyed the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and led to an 85 per cent in­crease in an­nu­al food im­ports, mis­us­ing scarce for­eign ex­change by di­rect­ing it in­to the hands of an elite few. At the same time, more than 75,000 acres of arable for­mer Ca­roni lands were par­celled off to po­lit­i­cal cronies,” she said.

She ac­cused Row­ley of turn­ing T&T from the Caribbean’s great­est ben­e­fi­cia­ry of di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment, “... in­to the on­ly coun­try in the re­gion with a net out­flow of in­vestors. Un­der his watch, the na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture was wrecked, home­less­ness be­came more wide­spread, and there’s a steady brain drain of pro­fes­sion­als seek­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties abroad.”

She al­so ac­cused Row­ley of de­stroy­ing the in­de­pen­dence of “vir­tu­al­ly every in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion, mis­man­aged the State sec­tor, ru­ined the na­tion’s im­age in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, and over­saw a re­gres­sion in so­ci­etal har­mo­ny. He de­stroyed democ­ra­cy with­in his own PNM par­ty, by tak­ing away PN­Mites’ rights to se­lect a na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive and a leader. His decade of dis­as­trous neg­li­gence has rad­i­cal­ly set back T&T’s thrust to­ward a mod­ern, evolved so­ci­ety with a di­ver­si­fied econ­o­my, op­por­tu­ni­ties for all, and a proud in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ing.”