PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Energy and Energy Industries Minister, Stuart Young, will be sworn in as Trinidad and Tobago’s seventh prime minister on Monday, even as the main opposition United National Congress (UNC) continued to oppose the manner in which he is taking over the government.
Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley (Left) and Energy and Energy Industries Minister, Stuart Young (File Photo)“You are hereby invited to attend a ceremony for the appointment of a Prime Minister, the occasion for the appointment of the Prime Minister having arisen. The ceremony will take place at the President’s Office on Monday March 17th at 10. am. I look forward to welcoming you,” according to the invitation sent out by President Christine Kangaloo.
Opposition Leader, Kamla Persad Bissessar, has called on Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley to re-think the issue, saying “I am warning you, should you proceed with this manner, recklessly Rowley, you Stuart Young and the President would face the brilliant UNC lawyers in the court house of Trinidad and Tobago.
“You cannot proceed under section 76 (1) of the Constitution where there is, occasion to appoint a prime minister, that the president should appoint a member of the house who is the leader of the House.
“Rowley 76 (1) the word leader is spelt with a capital L. When the constitution was changed, they changed it from leader with a common l to Leader with a capital L and that can only be the leader of the party in the house, which is Rowley.
“And then you cannot proceed under 76 (b) Rowley, you can’t go over 76 (b) either because that says, where it appears to the president the party does not have an undisputed leader.
“As long as Rowley holds on to the leadership, there is a disputed leader. So, you cannot proceed under 76 (1) A or B,” Persad Bissessar said.
But Prime Minister Rowley, 75, said that the UNC has had a history of challenging the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) in the courts and losing, reminding the population that the opposition party owes the PNM millions of dollars in costs for cases it has lost in recent years.
“You coming to tell me now that people who can’t manage their own affairs in their own party want to advise the PNM on law, about what happens in the PNM, about what happens in prime ministership?”
Speaking in a pre-recorded television interview program aired on Thursday night, Prime Minister Rowley, brushed aside the concerns of the Opposition Leader, telling viewers that he does not advise himself and that the legal advice he received has found nothing to prevent the Energy Minister taking over the government.
“I have been around quite a while and I have always said to you that I do not advise myself in law, whether I am minister, whether I am prime minister. Everything I have done, I have sought sound legal advice because I am a responsible officer of state.
“So if you see me doing that, assume that I am properly advised by law. But my lawyer isn’t on any platform talking foolishness. My lawyer advises me quietly. And to the extent that the Government is involved, I presume that the government has been properly advised and so (has) the President.
“We have a country with structures. You drink a rum and go on a platform and shouting waylay, waylay, waylay. That is not how the country is to be run. And that kind of behavior has been the characteristic of this individual. And I am surprised you all take her seriously all the time,” Rowley said, without naming Persad Bissessar by name.
“It is not part of my thought process. Have you gone to any lawyer, and I don’t mean any university lecturer who thinks he is a lawyer; have you gone to any serious senior counsel and asked that senior counsel what is being said here or what is required here?,” he asked the three reporters posing questions to him on the program that had been titled “From Mason Hall to Whitehall: The Closing Chapter,” named after a book he had published on becoming prime minister.
Prime Minister Rowley, who earlier this year, announced his decision to step down from office after 45 years in politics, said during the wide-ranging 100-minute television interview that the selection of Young, 50, was not done in a dictatorial manner and that he did not cast a vote in the election for the new prime minister.
“The selection of a member of the parliamentary caucus to lead was done by secret ballot. If I’m the only dictator that runs the dictation by way of a secret ballot, then I could live with that,” Rowley said, adding that Young had emerged as a leader early in his tenure as a minister.
“Leadership emerges when situations demand…When I appointed my first cabinet, Stuart Young did not have his own portfolio. I placed him in the Office of the Attorney General for a while and I maintained him in the Office of the Prime Minister largely on the basis that he was a very good lawyer and he would serve well in that capacity. And he demonstrated certain qualities that propelled him along.
Rowley said Young’s skills, dedication and qualities became obvious to him and other people.
“It got to the point that I could send him (to negotiations) without being there and the people who he was going to talk to knew that he came from the Prime Minister and that he was highly regarded by the Prime Minister,” he said, adding that Young’s skills left him well-suited for the job.
“If he has a strength, it is his people skills and his dedication, and these things show over time.”
During the interview in which he said he had long signaled his intention to quit active politics, Prime Minister Rowley said he was also looking forward to handing over the leadership of the party, since he has no intention of “holding on to anything.
“I am ensuring that the country, as far as I am able to, within the law of the country and the PNM constitution, I am trying to ensure that there is a smooth transition so that when I move out of this office, that whoever moves in, that the country will not be disadvantaged, that the country would even benefit. And that that is done within the Constitution of the country.
“And the same thing with the PNM—that when I move out as political leader, I don’t scatter the pearls, that I ensure that the PNM, if I am able to, is strengthened and not weakened. Because a strong PNM makes a strong Trinidad and Tobago,” he added.
Asked what he felt his legacy would be, Rowley said he hoped it would be along the line that he “must have done something good.
“Some will remember me for what they didn’t get and some will remember me for what they achieved during my tenure and what I did to put them in a better position. I have a stack of thank-you cards in my office at St Ann’s from people who saw it fit, for one reason or the other, to buy a card, write it and send it to me.
“And the ones that I appreciate the most are the ones that tell me how the policy or how the action would have put them or their children in a better position going forward,” Rowley said, insisting that unlike others, he had not allowed the Office of the Prime Minister to dictate his character and that he felt “very much” connected to the regular man.
“Whatever I am, is what I’ve been. I didn’t become that with office. I try to be respectful, fair (and) responsible. I know there are some people who would have issues with who I am, but that’s who I am. And that’s who you ask to manage your affairs. I have a responsibility now to manage it to the best of my ability and that’s what I think I’ve done.”
But the outgoing prime minister said he was disappointed that he could not have done much more to deal with the crime situation in Trinidad and Tobago.
He cited the breakdown of the family and the commercialization of crime in the form of organized criminal conduct, suggesting that the existing state of emergency would not be extended.
He said one of the reasons why his administration had imposed the state of emergency was because some people felt it was a panacea of some sort.
“Now that we have done it, those people who were calling for a state of emergency, I hope that they would have been satisfied that it is not a panacea. It allowed the police to do certain things, but it did not prevent the criminals from carrying on with what they had intended to do in many instances…
“The high level of activity and the SoE would have given them something extra, but it has not removed the revolving door. It has not removed the criminal mind. It has not removed the commercial enterprise in crime, and of course it has not opened the Government to more authority in fighting crime,” he said.
