I am PM of All Citizens

Exclusive Interview with PM Rowley Part 1 of 2

In first of a two-part exclusive interview with the T&T Guardian, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, addresses a wide range of issues including the spread of COVID-19, the award of state contracts to reputed gang leaders and how he plans to deal with the hate speech and racial strife that surfaced during the recent general election.

Q: Prime Minister, congratulations on your re-election. Do you agree the recent election result (22-19) demonstrated yet again, the sharp and almost equal racial divide between Indo and African T&T citizens? How will you bring people who feel disenfranchised to the centre?

A: I don’t accept it, I don’t believe it, don’t buy it. Without apology, I challenge the perception of racial politics.

Yes, in this election race came to fore, but a race has not been disenfranchised. We had free and fair elections. We’ve had close elections before (18-18, 17-17-2) People are free to vote for who they want.

Politics is about interest. Many factors go into victory and defeat. Race is one of the many differences in our country. Religion is another, geography another, social standing another, class another and how these differences play out in the political arena depends on how people encourage others to behave.

Race loomed large in this election because the UNC decided to run a campaign based on race which they have done for years and intensified in the run-up to the election. They chose to focus only on racial issues and came up with One Corridor, something no pseudo-intellectual commentator explained to the population. It meant focussing on disgruntled black people who are not getting what they think they should get.

The actual campaign went as far as to portray the future of unfortunate people having to eat grass if results came out a certain way. This is not what it was. What was One Corridor? ‘Look at your condition. You need a couch, stove and fridge. Your government is not doing for that, and it was a black government.’

Eating grass was used as a symbol of circumstance. I have met people who were paid to stay home, not to vote. Had they succeeded in the campaign they structured and carried out they would have formed the government today. But they failed so the effort is to be analysed and everyone is talking race. They ran it solely on racial superiority or inferiority arrangements which they advanced. Those who ran the UNC ran a racial campaign that backfired.

Do you deny that we have had tribal politics all along, since the first election of Dr Eric Williams?

We have always been divided because people are different. Politics is about interest, and division is about interest.

Take Tobago. For 20 years the PNM couldn’t win an election in Tobago. The Tobagonians felt their interests were better served under ANR Robinson and PNM couldn’t win the seats. I was living in Trinidad and when I ran for an election in Tobago, you know they told me? ‘You from here, but you’ve been away too long.’

Race was not the issue, but PNM couldn’t win the seats. We all came from somewhere. Leadership goes way beyond the PM or public figures. Whoever you are, wherever, whatever you do, be it in business, sport, religion, academia, display leadership.

Before COVID, I personally wanted to reach out to respected leaders in all communities to call on them to choose their better selves in relating to people in their communities by demonstrating tolerance and respect. I do so now.

Doesn’t blame and racial mudslinging go both ways? We are not sharing the blame for a campaign like that. We in the PNM didn’t carry out a campaign like that. Our party is wide open. We had people from all races, all religions, all backgrounds, so we are not accepting that the elections were based on race. The PNM is a rally for all, cutting across race, colour, creed and class. Today, I am the PM of all citizens, and serve all citizens, to the shock of those who ran a racial campaign.

After this previous election, where racial words were thrown between parties, people have been calling for laws against hate speech. This recent experience shows us legislation may be required. I will be speaking to the AG to examine misbehaviour along racial or other lines to enact legislation, determine legislative parameters. If we need to, we will ensure people who act to the detriment of the country are held accountable by law.

Now technology makes it possible to use social media anonymously or openly use hate speech to damage society. Hate speech or use of publications to disturb the national ethos may have to be controlled by laws.

From T&T topping the charts for COVID-19 performance, we now have community spread crossing 2000 and growing with over 30 dead. How did we fail? Border control? Elections? Lack of testing?

We were not recognised for being immune to the virus but for our decisive action and preparedness and creating and operating an excellent parallel health system to look after infected citizens. COVID-19 globally has a course to run. Initially, we locked the country down, to reduce its transmission but couldn’t stay that way forever. We have an economy to run, people must earn and live, so we came back out cautiously with some restrictions in place. Once we began to mix, went back to some normalcy, as expected, people were exposed, and there was a surge.

Are our health systems adequate? Cases are growing exponentially. People are dying. Do we have sufficient beds, ventilators, medical staff? Has enough been done?

Enough in relation to what? We are trying to suppress the explosion of the virus in the population because if it explodes here. Nothing will be enough. We can’t have enough hospital beds or doctors if every person vulnerable to the virus in the country is sick at the same time.

The volume of sick people as against our ability to treat them governs success or failure. Failure in dealing with COVID-19 is measured by whether it has overcome your health care system.

Currently, our health system is coping. Most people who are affected don’t require hospitalisation or intensive care, but if they infect the elderly or those with underlying diseases, our health system will be overcome. That is why we keep taking action, to slow the spread of the virus to prevent it from spreading whether we make mask-wearing mandatory or ask people to stay home, (as with the public service to reduce the number of exposed people). That’s our national effort.

Today in a daily newspaper, there is a photo that makes nonsense of everything I have done—people congregating like a J’Ouvert band outside a bank. You wonder if these people have heard what we are dealing with and do they care that they are exposed to a virus that creates illness and death?

Some citizens are complaining that the new mask laws and the risk of fines will most adversely affect the most vulnerable (vendors, construction workers, daily paid workers, etc.). What is the alternative?

It’s a simple ask, to wash your hands, cough in your elbow, wear masks, socially distance. Don’t touch your face, don’t congregate. The alternative is not to do it and, in a pandemic, get sick and die. That is the alternative.

Construction workers, eg, welders, wear protective gear, so what is the story about ‘It’s stifling me.’ There is provision for those with health conditions. They can get an exemption, but for the average person, a mask will protect you and others from a virus that could kill you.

Are future lockdowns inevitable? If the virus is rampant and the health service gets overwhelmed the only way to reduce the exposure of the population to infected people is with a lockdown. We must avoid that as lockdowns are disastrous, leading to a loss of jobs, closure of companies and poverty. The Treasury doesn’t have the money to carry that.

All of that is the knock-on effects from us not doing the simple civic ask of fighting the virus by wearing a mask or following the hygiene protocols.

Some people are defiant. They say the government is bullying. Well, to good purpose. To prevent the virus from going into your orifices, save your life, and livelihood. We are fighting a pandemic, for God’s sake!

What about the borders, and the nationals who want to come home? Will you keep borders closed till we get a vaccine?

The borders will remain closed while we understand who moves from where to where. We couldn’t eliminate the virus – you will see groups came in, tested positive and we managed their care, but the virus eventually got into our country. Now we’ve moved from isolation to clusters to community spread we must compare that to the outside world.

If the risks are pretty much the same, then we can begin to think of opening gradually. Health systems in places like New York, Italy, and the UK with the tragic images of thousands ill and dead, were overcome. If some people flout rules and congregate and spread the virus, and health systems are overwhelmed, the outcome will be calamitous for all citizens.

You vowed to expose UNC corruption six years back. Has that happened?

Several people in the UNC whose conduct when they were in government is now attracting the attention of the police have still ended up in Parliament to serve. Just before this election, a judge read out three hours of judgment against a former UNC minister of government in the largest fraud case in the history of T&T. Despite this, he returned to the polls and Parliament without losing a single vote. Nobody cared. The opposition could have been government.

If citizens actively vote for people whose conduct is of interest to the police, they turn governance into a fools’ paradise. You cannot be fish and fowl at the same time, you’re either wearing feathers or scales. Can we expect arrests? The advancing of criminal indictments is a matter for the DPP, and charging is a matter for the police and Commissioner of Police.

Several members of the UNC Cabinet of 2010-2015 have issues which have attracted the interest of the police and are already before court. There are specific instances where large sums of money were mishandled and there is evidence of it and that too is attracting the attention of the police.

What the government can do is find the evidence and give it to the authorities who are pursuing the matter and how it progresses is outside the government’s control.

Are you saying your government is squeaky clean, accountable and transparent?

I don’t want you to say my government is squeaky clean as there could be someone in government who has dirty hands, and I haven’t found out yet but yes, there is accountability in the system now there was not there before. We frown upon the behaviour that had become the norm before we came into office and conducted ourselves with responsibility and integrity.

People say governments are all the same, yet my Cabinet has not been used as a mechanism to mishandle the Treasury nor functioned as if we came into office to enrich its members.

During 2015-2020, there were no ministerial actions that I am aware of where there was conduct concerning the handling of public assets for the benefit of the minister. The Opposition made a mountain of how the AG and his family got state rentals as though that’s corruption. That’s just foolishness. The government has been renting private buildings in this country for years. And you don’t think there’s a conflict of interest between the AG and his family rental? My government has reduced the number of privately rented buildings, and begun to occupy the Government Campus that was languishing.

A government department deals with rentals. The AG declared his and his family interest and did not take part in the decisions. In the Integrity in Public Life Act, it does not say that you cannot have a conflict. It says if you have a conflict, you must identify and withdraw from it.

Ministers recused themselves 90 odd times. Recused is not corruption. The system is working. Suppose they had stayed there and conducted business without letting the public or their Cabinet colleagues know? That would be corrupt. If you identify it as a conflict and not participate, that’s correct.

While I have been Prime Minister, no contractor came to me at my residence to discuss any contract. No public officer could tell you I told them to give anyone a contract, and that’s the difference.

Let’s talk crime. Until recently, the murder rate in TT hovered around 500 people a year. The Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith has repeatedly complained that gang warfare has been driven by community leaders who fund crime with state contracts.

We do have a problem of community leaders using their position to corral government contracts and distribute drugs, arms, women. The Commissioner of Police alone can’t do it. We must find a way to ensure we don’t encourage the gang culture by allowing persons who have a history of criminal conduct to be beneficiaries of largesse provided as a safety net for the most vulnerable and in need in communities.

The word is if you withdraw contracts, gang leaders blackmail the State, threaten to make trouble, shoot up the place.

There is some element of truth to it. Everything we do has a plus, and a negative and the response must protect the State. When we deny opportunities to certain people without being able to substantiate it in law, it is a different conversation.

It’s a broader problem than saying the Commissioner of Police vets contracts. If they are gang leaders, then why aren’t the laws on gangs not being applied? If you call someone a gang leader without being able to verify it and deny them a contract on that basis, it’s a crime and the State is liable.

If you are a gang leader, there are laws to deal with gang leaders. Gang leaders are not ashamed to pursue their rights when you take action; you must protect the State. By using credible information, we are trying to prevent career criminals from getting state contracts.