Trinidad PM expects ‘more and more’ arrests after Marlene

Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley speaks during the conversations with the Prime Minister at City Hall on Thursday evening.
Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley speaks during the conversations with the Prime Minister at City Hall on Thursday evening.

(Trinidad Guardian) Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the coun­try is go­ing through a pe­ri­od when the pub­lic will see “more and more of what hap­pened in the last week”, re­fer­ring to the re­cent ar­rest and charges be­ing laid against for­mer min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald.

At the PNM’s Port-of-Spain meet­ing, Row­ley said when he re­ceived in­for­ma­tion last Thurs­day on Mc­Don­ald’s ar­rest, he called Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young about it, but Young didn’t know any­thing.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley arrives at City Hall for the conversations with the Prime Minister on Thursday night.

Row­ley said Thurs­day’s meet­ing had fo­cused on “Pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty and the loss of an MP in POS South, but we’ve been able to point to the fact that all’s not lost and a bet­ter way of deal­ing with pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty can be an­tic­i­pat­ed and re­alised be­cause of the changes we’re mak­ing and our com­mit­ment to good gov­er­nance. “

He added, “We’re in a time when we’ll see more and more of what hap­pened last week. If there are peo­ple who end up on the wrong side of the law, such peo­ple will have a bet­ter chance of be­ing held ac­count­able.”

Ear­li­er on Thurs­day at the post-cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Row­ley said he was not aware that po­lice were in­ves­ti­gat­ing Mc­Don­ald and was not aware of her ar­rest.

Row­ley said what hap­pened was in­de­pen­dent han­dling of the mat­ter with­out in­ter­fer­ence or ob­struc­tion, “That’s how it should be….all that hap­pened last week is we’re ad­her­ing to a high stan­dard,’

He said Mc­Don­ald was not the first sit­ting min­is­ter to be charged as UNC Min­is­ter Dhan­raj Singh had been charged while in of­fice. Row­ley said the pub­lic would not see a PNM cor­po­ra­tion chair­man con­tin­u­ing to run a cor­po­ra­tion if the per­son was charged for bribery.

He said the rea­son why “we” aren’t en­tire­ly un­hap­py about “what hap­pened last week” was be­cause the sys­tem was work­ing and if there was wrong-do­ing, there’s ac­count­abil­i­ty, “We say we’re build­ing a new so­ci­ety,” he added.

Mean­while, PNM POS South mem­ber Patrick By­noe urged Row­ley and the PNM to look for in­for­ma­tion on what’s go­ing on “un­der­ground” and any Op­po­si­tion at­tempts to “mash-up” the PNM.

By­noe said PNM has to be on the look­out since the par­ty lost the seat to the NAR in 1986, “I was the del­e­gate for POS South PNM then, we cam­paigned house to house. The first time we knew the NAR was a threat was the Sun­day be­fore the poll,” he added

Row­ley agreed par­ty mem­bers al­ways need to know what an op­po­nent is do­ing.