Trinidad PM expects ‘more and more’ arrests after Marlene

(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.

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.