If the political leader of the PNM Dr Keith Rowley wants to prove his innocence over allegations of sexual harassment made by a journalist, he should subject himself to a lie detector test.
This was the challenge thrown out to Rowley by United National Congress deputy political leader Dr Roodal Moonilal, who accused him of trying to deflect from the allegations made by former investigative reporter at the Express Anika Gumbs.
Gumbs resigned from the Express last Friday and in her resignation letter she detailed three instances where she claimed Rowley made inappropriate comments to her at his home and office. Rowley has dismissed Gumbs’ allegations as untrue and claimed that the reporter was paid by the UNC to fabricate them.
Speaking at a political meeting at the party’s Oropouche East constituency office in Debe on Monday, Moonilal dismissed Rowley’s claims made at Sunday’s PNM rally at Market Square, Scarborough, that Government was paying people to lie on him and there was a $15 million hit on his life. He said: “These are serious allegations made by a working journalist, an investigative journalist, who is no friend of the United National Congress.
“I want to tell you that this is a journalist who every Sunday was chasing down from Anand Ramlogan to Roodal Moonilal to Kamla Persad-Bissessar. “Chasing all over the country to write about all kinds of things. This is no friend of the UNC who raised serious issues concerning the conduct of a man who wants to be prime minister, where she suggested that this fella just can’t keep his clothes on. “If you have an allegation that somebody is trying to hurt you, injure you, threaten you, take it to the police properly.
“Don’t go on a political platform in Tobago and gallery yourself and feel if you politicise it and draw the Government into that nonsense, it would deflect attention from a serious matter.” He said Rowley’s allegations of a hit on his life came the same day Gumbs resigned from the Trinidad Express.
“That was the same Sunday that the newspaper had this story about a working journalist. That was the same Sunday when he could not answer that, he said the Government paying people to lie on him. That is what he is coming with instead of answering.”
He had this advice for Rowley: “My solution is simple, Keith Rowley, why don’t you do a lie detector test and tell us if you kept on your clothes, if you took off half your clothes, all your clothes, if you invited a journalist to come home.” He added that Rowley should know that interviews should never be done at his private residence and that he has three offices that he could facilitate journalists.
Describing Gumbs’ claim that she interviewed Rowley at his Diego Martin home, he asked if he became prime minister if reporters would be allowed at his home. “I want to tell you I am a minister five years now and no reporter ever came to my house one day. “I cannot invite reporters in my house, that is improper. I have three offices I can invite them to. Rowley has an office in the Parliament, he has one at the Opposition Leader’s office, he clearly has one in Diego Martin but none suitable to invite a reporter.
“So if you’re prime minster, what will happen? Everyday a reporter coming to visit you as prime minister in your chambers? It does not work like that, you conduct government business and public business in public offices, not in your private house,” Moonilal added. He said that the allegation of death threats was also bad for potential foreign investments as it suggested that the country’s Government was trying to assassinate its Opposition Leader.
Saying that it was far from the truth, he said it was the People’s Partnership who afforded Rowley the privilege to be the first Opposition Leader to have a police security detail.