PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Two terms and al­most ten years lat­er, how will Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley be re­mem­bered when he steps away from that of­fice next week?

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James says the Prime Min­is­ter’s lega­cy will be a com­pli­cat­ed one, as his pe­ri­od in of­fice saw many de­vel­op­ments and chal­lenges. How­ev­er, he felt his lead­er­ship dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic will be con­sid­ered among the high points by most.

“We can sim­ply say that he and his Min­is­ter of Health took the bull by the horns and brought a lot of sat­is­fac­tion, a lot of feel­ing of safe­ty by the way they han­dled the out­break,” said James, who not­ed that while there re­main peo­ple who ques­tion the threat of the virus then and now, he felt the Prime Min­is­ter, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Med­ical Chief of Staff Roshan Paras­ram large­ly made the cor­rect de­ci­sions dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Dr James al­so feels the Prime Min­ster should be ac­knowl­edged for the com­ple­tion of sev­er­al med­ical fa­cil­i­ties across T&T, as the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal, the Diego Mar­tin Health Fa­cil­i­ty, the Rox­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal and San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal cam­pus were all com­plet­ed un­der his tenure, with the Cen­tral Block of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal al­so set to be open this week.

Dr James al­so felt the Prime Min­is­ter had some sig­nif­i­cant fail­ures, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of ed­u­ca­tion, as he felt there had been no im­prove­ment in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. He al­so be­lieves the Prime Min­is­ter would be dis­ap­point­ed with the lim­it­ed progress con­cern­ing To­ba­go’s push for au­ton­o­my.

“You al­so have to think what he has not ac­com­plished and not un­like oth­er gov­ern­ments be­fore his, he has not been able to bring home au­ton­o­my to To­ba­go, and so he will leave of­fice with that mat­ter, that very im­por­tant mat­ter be­ing out­stand­ing al­so,” James said.

“It’s not on­ly To­ba­go, by the way, he has a com­mit­tee that he set up to re­form the Con­sti­tu­tion. That com­mit­tee has been formed but he has not been able to do any­thing. He has not been able to re­form the Con­sti­tu­tion, if that was his in­ten­tion and de­sire. I think he failed there.”

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Shane Mo­hammed, how­ev­er, be­lieves the Prime Min­is­ter’s lega­cy will be far more neg­a­tive, as he says many of those hos­pi­tals were in­her­it­ed projects, while the coun­try’s econ­o­my did not im­prove un­der his watch.

“Every­thing that we’ve heard about so far in the last 10 years has come down to eco­nom­ics or some­thing I call econo-pol­i­tics. I have dubbed it econo-pol­i­tics be­cause it has to be po­lit­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient to the Gov­ern­ment,” not­ed Mo­hammed, who said the Prime Min­is­ter will oth­er­wise be known for “win­ning two elec­tions.”

How­ev­er, he said the coun­try had large­ly stag­nat­ed from an eco­nom­ic stand­point un­der dur­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s terms.

“Econ­o­mists will tell you that we are we are stag­nat­ed, and the on­ly thing that the Gov­ern­ment has re­lied up­on is rat­ings to help their cause. But those rat­ings have not helped be­cause the com­mon man in Trinidad and To­ba­go doesn’t have pur­chas­ing pow­er be­cause of in­fla­tion and are un­able to feed their fam­i­lies. Have we looked at the so­ci­o­log­i­cal as­pect of why there’s an uptick in crime? Is it that peo­ple are strug­gling to feed and put food on their ta­ble, and they’re re­sort­ing to crime as a mech­a­nism to get to get mon­ey?” asked Mo­hammed, “The lega­cy of this Prime Min­is­ter is not one of pros­per­i­ty. It is not one of se­cu­ri­ty. It has been trans­ac­tion­al. For the most part, ab­solute­ly trans­ac­tion­al.”

An­oth­er po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, al­so felt the Prime Min­is­ter’s lega­cy was large­ly neg­a­tive giv­en his in­abil­i­ty to ad­dress grow­ing con­cerns about crime and the econ­o­my.

“So, what re­al­ly has been achieved? The pock­ets of the cit­i­zens are not much bet­ter than it was in 2015 by far, not bet­ter, be­cause the in­crease doesn’t com­pen­sate for the in­creas­es in cost of liv­ing and in­fla­tion. The health sec­tor is still in a mess, and noth­ing has im­proved there, and the cost of health is now es­ca­lat­ing out of pro­por­tion, as well and out of the reach of the pock­ets of the av­er­age cit­i­zen,” Ram­per­sad said.

All of the an­a­lysts agreed that the clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery al­so re­flect­ed neg­a­tive­ly on his time in charge.

Dr James and PNM stal­wart Ash­ton Ford ac­knowl­edged that the Prime Min­is­ter was re­spon­si­ble for the com­ple­tion or restora­tion of sev­er­al build­ings around the coun­try.

James not­ed the Prime Min­is­ter had put spe­cial em­pha­sis on the restora­tion of his­toric build­ings, in­clud­ing the Red House and the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en, while al­so fi­nal­ly bring­ing the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in­to use.

Ford al­so not­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter should be re­mem­bered for ad­dress­ing the in­ter-is­land trans­porta­tion is­sues.

“Air and sea trans­port, es­pe­cial­ly the sea trans­port and ma­jor fa­cil­i­ties in To­ba­go like the hos­pi­tal in To­ba­go, he did a lot of mas­sive de­vel­op­ment in To­ba­go cul­mi­nat­ing with the In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port open­ing,” said Ford, who al­so point­ed out that there had been sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment in the Diego Mar­tin re­gion un­der the Prime Min­is­ter’s lead­er­ship.