Weeks after announcing his plans to retire later this year, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley bid farewell to the media at a mixer at Balisier House on Wednesday night.
He urged the media to pursue truth, expose injustice, and highlight the country’s positives to inspire future generations.
“You, the media, you have a responsibility. When you go to the orchard, to not just describe the sour oranges, but to at least spend a little time talking about the flowers and letting our children know that even as they have to work and they should work for a future, the present is worth enjoying. So tonight, I’m happy that we could host you here as a political party and you could feel comfortable coming into the headquarters of a political party that you criticise from time to time, sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly, sometimes severely.”
He credited the media with compelling him and his colleagues to think carefully before speaking or acting.
Recalling last week’s coverage of the party’s internal politics, Rowley jokingly described it as “Tobago love” between the media and the PNM, viewing it as a sign of their good relationship.
“You (the media) miss it (the PNM) so much that last week you spent more time worrying about the PNM future than the PNM itself, indicating to me that there’s some Tobago love there between you and the PNM. And that should tell you and tell us in the PNM that we have a significant role to play because when the media begins to miss you, that is their way of saying, I love you. Ladies and gentlemen, if I had known that I would be missed, I would have left a long time ago.”
Rowley asked not to be forgotten as he prepares to bid farewell to public life “in the not too distant future.”
Addressing the crowd, Rowley reflected on his first speaking engagement in Trinidad in 1967 at Queen’s Hall. For two minutes, which he said felt like an eternity, he stood silent before the audience.
“Here I was, this lonely Tobagonian with my principal and the winds waiting for me to perform. And I stood in my shoes and I wondered. I was so taken up with the ambience, with the crowd, that I could not bring my mind to focus on what I was there for, which was to speak. And I’m looking at this huge audience in Queen’s Hall, hoping that I see a face that I recognise and realise that I was all alone. And I never said a word. I stood there and I watched this crowd, I watched the roof, I watched the floor, I looked around, quite impressed actually.”
Since that day in his late teenage years, Rowley said he vowed never to remain silent again.
