Guardian ( Trinidad and Tobago )
01 May 2023 ( Page 5 )
School bomb threats not a coincidence
PM Rowley at PNM Family Day:
RYAN BACHOO
Don’t go down that road!
That was Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley’s response to claims by Pundit
Satyanand Maharaj that urban youth along the East-West corridor are
targeting East Indians.
Speaking on the issue for the first time yesterday at the PNM’s Sports and
Family Day in Toco, he said: “When the Opposition Leader and two or any
other number of pundits want to get up in this country and say that the
crime we are all facing, that we are all exposed to, that we are all victims of,
when they want to get up and say that it is black people who are attacking
Indian people, I say today you all stop that! Don’t go down that road!
That’s a road of no return.”
The Prime Minister also addressed the bomb threats last Friday that sent
more than 100 schools across the country into panic.
“You think that it is accidental, that, on the very day that they are having a
vote of no confidence in the Minister of National Security who they had been
pillorying nonstop, that on that day, you wake up in the morning and
virtually every school in the country has a bomb threat?” he asked.
“You think that’s a joke? You think that’s by accident? You know that if you
shut down every school in this country by calling in a bomb threat, the chaos
and trauma that you will cause to those children and the fear in their
parents? Of all the days in the year, the one day that happens is the day when
they are coming to the Parliament to move a vote of no confidence in the
National Security Minister.”
Rowley used his 48-minute address at the event to chastise the Opposition
who were at the same time launching their new headquarters on Mulchan
Seuchan Road in Chaguanas.
He told PNM supporters that “these are difficult days in Trinidad and Tobago
but let us not make them more difficult than they should be.”
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, left, on his arrival at the PNM Sport and
Family Day in Toco yesterday.
With him at right is Toco/Sangre Grande MP Roger Monroe.
He also doubled down on his decision not to meet with former National
Transformation Alliance (NTA) political leader Gary Griffith and Opposition
Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar to discuss an anti-crime plan. “It is not going
to be easy especially when those who should contribute to the fight become
part of the problem,” he said.
Rowley further revealed that when the Police Service Commission (PSC) sent
a former appeal judge to look into what was happening in the Firearms Unit
of the T&T Police Service, the judge reported that what he saw was “a welloiled criminal enterprise.”
He also rejected the Opposition’s call to break up the Ministry of National
Security into two arms including a Ministry of Homeland Security and a
Defense Ministry and struck down Persad-Bissessar’s “stand your ground”
proposal.
“When the Opposition Leader says that their answer to their supporters’ call
for defence from the criminal element is to pass in the Parliament of this
country stand your ground legislation, I want to ask the Opposition Leader,
what ground are they going to stand on to kill anybody they want to kill and
say simply I was afraid of that person, that person was about to attack me in
the road or in my yard and I killed them? The crime for picking a mango in
somebody’s yard cannot be being shot to death,” he said.
He later added that there are people in this country with many questions to
answer who move to ensure that their matters never end up in a court of law.
“We must reject people, whether they are in politics, in the media, or
wherever they are, who believe that you can take advantage of the people of
Trinidad and Tobago and as long as you have the means—and by means I
mean money and contact.
You can follow a line which is now getting clearer and clearer in Trinidad and
Tobago that once you are big in the dance, once you are accused to have
committed certain offences, you will take action so that your matter will
never come to the court,” Rowley said.
He also slammed those against the move to make the Caribbean Court of
Justice (CCJ) the final court of appeal in the country. Pointing out that the
CCJ’s headquarters is based in Port-of-Spain, Rowley once again took aim at
the Opposition Leader, saying: “Other Caribbean countries are one by one
joining the CCJ because even some who are apprehensive have seen the value
but we believe that is because a few well-monied people can go to the Privy
Council once in a while on matters that they choose, but we have to wait until
the Englishman tells us that something is good before it is good.”
Dismantling Service Commissions
The Prime Minister also used his speech to announce that in 2024 he will
move to dismantle Service Commissions. He explained his rationale for the
move saying that “all of our public services are under-performing” because
they do not have proper management arrangements in place.
“These so-called independent service commissions that are hamstringing
this country, there are certain things that will never change, will never
improve as long as basic management tenets are not being met,” he said.
Rowley says what he wants in the 21st century is to abolish all the service
commissions and replace them with one tribunal. He says the purpose of the
service commissions in 1962 was to protect people from arbitrary action from
the incoming government and there were fears that there would be racial
discrimination thus the need for independent service commissions.
“Those service commissions are inimical to good order,” he said.
Rowley pointed to the thousands of teachers across the 400 schools in the
country and claimed that there is a “part-time service commission once in a
while” that slows down the process for different things. The same, he added,
could be said of the Police Service Commission and the Statutory Authorities
Service Commission.
Photo: Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds, left, shakes hands with
PNM Tobago’s Kelvon Morris.
PICTURE PNM FACEBOOK PAGE
Photo: Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales speaks with party supporters at
the PNM Sport and Family Day.
PICTURE PNM FACEBOOK PAGE
Photo: Minister of Rural Development and Local Government Faris Al-Rawi, left,
and a PNM colleague flex their muscles.
PICTURE PNM FACEBOOK PAGE
Photo: Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, left, on his arrival at the PNM Sport and
Family Day in Toco yesterday.
With him at right is Toco/Sangre Grande MP Roger Monroe