Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has shared his pro­found dis­ap­point­ment in the lead­er­ship of To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, crit­i­cis­ing his gov­er­nance and de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

Dur­ing a spe­cial sit-down in­ter­view with jour­nal­ists from Guardian Me­dia, CCN and TTT, that was tele­vised on Thurs­day, Row­ley said, “I am very dis­ap­point­ed in the way this par­tic­u­lar ad­min­is­tra­tion was be­ing be­cause, as you say, un­der my tenure, I went out of my way from day one to try to be a co­op­er­at­ing Prime Min­is­ter with To­ba­go.”

Re­flect­ing on the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) To­ba­go Coun­cil’s un­prece­dent­ed de­feat in 2021 THA elec­tion, Row­ley said, “We went to the polls. There was a 14-one de­feat for the PNM. What did I do? I took eight min­is­ters to To­ba­go be­cause I saw a group of young peo­ple with ab­solute­ly no ex­pe­ri­ence in charge of To­ba­go, with no op­po­si­tion ex­cept the PNM one seat in­side. I took a group of min­is­ters—At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Min­is­ter of Tourism—and I sat them down at the Prime Min­is­ter’s res­i­dence, and we dis­cussed things for their ben­e­fit.”

He said he grew frus­trat­ed with the turn of events, say­ing, “And then, the next thing I know, I hear there’s a spe­cial ses­sion of the as­sem­bly dur­ing the re­cess. Of course, I’m keen to know what it’s about, on­ly to dis­cov­er that the Chief Sec­re­tary found some ‘mad­man’ in the road to call a spe­cial ses­sion of the as­sem­bly to go and lie on me, say­ing that I am in league with my lawyer, Gilbert Pe­ter­son, and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, to over­turn his gov­ern­ment.”

Row­ley went on to de­fend his ef­forts to ad­vance To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my, lament­ing the chal­lenges faced due to lim­it­ed par­lia­men­tary sup­port.

Row­ley al­so not­ed, “The PNM is the on­ly po­lit­i­cal par­ty that went to a con­ven­tion and re­ceived a mo­tion by ac­cla­ma­tion that To­ba­go should get in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment.”

Over­all, he said he was sat­is­fied with the ef­forts he made to de­vel­op To­ba­go, its peo­ple and econ­o­my.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so raised con­cerns about the THA’s man­age­ment un­der Au­gus­tine’s lead­er­ship.

“The gov­er­nance of To­ba­go is not as dif­fi­cult as the gov­er­nance of Trinidad and To­ba­go—one it’s a small­er unit, and two, it is not as com­plex. But be­cause the pol­i­tics has be­come so cen­tral and so ag­gres­sive, the role of the THA has drift­ed away from what I think Win­ston Mur­ray and the ear­ly ANR Robin­son would have ad­vo­cat­ed.”

He sug­gest­ed that the peo­ple had re­lied too heav­i­ly on gov­ern­ment hand­outs, adding, “Too much re­liance on the gov­ern­ment for ten days and morn­ing work and that sort of thing, which seems to be the on­ly thing they’re in­ter­est­ed in.”

He felt To­bag­o­ni­ans could de­sire more that was piv­otal to the growth in sev­er­al sec­tors.

Fol­low­ing Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment to re­sign in Jan­u­ary, Au­gus­tine con­ced­ed he and Row­ley will for­ev­er be po­lit­i­cal en­e­mies.

Ad­dress­ing Row­ley’s im­pend­ing re­tire­ment in Jan­u­ary, Au­gus­tine had told Guardian Me­dia in Jan­u­ary, “Per­haps the Prime Min­is­ter and I will re­main life­long po­lit­i­cal en­e­mies. But cer­tain­ly, hav­ing been in pol­i­tics since 2017, I un­der­stand how much pub­lic ser­vice at this lev­el takes from the in­di­vid­ual, takes from the fam­i­ly.”

He wished him the best then but did not hold back in cri­tiquing Row­ley’s lead­er­ship, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing To­ba­go’s push for au­ton­o­my. He said Row­ley’s ex­it would “not stop To­ba­go’s quest for au­ton­o­my at all.”

How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine said then he re­mained op­ti­mistic.

“It will hap­pen one day. It did not hap­pen dur­ing Dr Row­ley’s tenure, and per­haps it’s be­cause of how he han­dled it. It’s just not one of his lega­cies,” Au­gus­tine said then.

Re­flect­ing on the broad­er im­pact of Row­ley’s lead­er­ship then as well, Au­gus­tine claimed To­ba­go had been ne­glect­ed.

Ef­forts to reach the Chief Sec­re­tary yes­ter­day for a com­ment on Row­ley’s lat­est claim about their re­la­tion­ship were un­suc­cess­ful.

But, dur­ing the in­ter­view on Thurs­day, Row­ley told the me­dia he is con­fi­dent To­bag­o­ni­ans are sat­is­fied with his ser­vice to them.

He said, “I think the ma­jor­i­ty of To­bag­o­ni­ans are cog­nizant of my tenure in of­fice would have brought some sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment to the af­fairs of To­ba­go. I think such per­sons would know that if I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do for To­ba­go, I would do and I’ve done my best.”