Stories by
JOEL JULIEN
The Government will receive the motion of no confidence against Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi with “great glee,” said a combative Prime Minister Keith Rowley on his return to T&T on Saturday night from a two-week trip abroad. He said he wasn’t surprised by the opposition threat to file such a motion.
Rowley also said as far as he knows his Government had done nothing wrong in its handling of the situation with temporary Independent Senator Justin Junkere. On Friday Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar said a private motion for the House of Representatives to express a loss of confidence in Al-Rawi was filed in the Parliament.
If approved it could be debated in about 12 days. Persad-Bissessar said the motion was filed in the wake of the passage of the Strategic Services Agency (Amendment) Bill in Parliament.
“I think the Attorney General can defend himself very well, but I will tell you one thing, we will receive that motion with great glee because it is of no surprise to us that the UNC (United National Congress) has no confidence in the Attorney General. You know the kind of attorney general that they have confidence in and our Attorney General does not fit that measure so we are not surprised at all,” he said.
Rowley was also asked about the concern raised by Opposition Senator Gerald Ramdeen about Junkere following news of Junkere having a state brief from the AG’s office. Junkere was one of two Independent Senators who voted with the Government to pass the SSA bill. Rowley went on the attack against Ramdeen himself.
“I just find it a little offensive to be receiving queries from Gerald Ramdeen. Gerald Ramdeen is a person of great interest to the Government of Trinidad and Tobago and I have some questions for him too, and one of them is whether in fact the people of Trinidad and Tobago should support what they represent and to the best of my knowledge this Government has done nothing inappropriate with Mr Junkere.
There are some appointments that we make and some that other people make and I don’t know that we are having to answer any questions from Mr Ramdeen, who as far as I know the last time I heard his name he was under criminal investigation, a series of them,” Rowley said.
Junkere’s state brief was received under former People’s Partnership attorney general Garvin Nicholas.
Al-Rawi said Ramdeen and Opposition Senator Wayne Sturge have amassed a bill of state briefs from the AG’s office, amounting to more than $26 million and $10 million, respectively.
‘My drivers won’t be doing more than 80’
PM Rowley is “very scared of fast driving” because “speed kills” and as a result of this his security detail will adhere to the country’s speed limits. He was responding to a question of whether his entourage would obey the speed limits.
“My entourage? They had better because I’m very scared of fast driving,” Rowley said. “The drivers will tell you if they get beyond my comfort zone they will know about it,” he said.
Within recent weeks speed guns have been introduced in this country and enforcement of the speed limits on the nation’s roadways, including the 80 kilometres per hour maximum limit for the highways, have been met with some criticism from motorists who have called for a review of the laws.
During last week’s post-Cabinet news conference Works and Transport Minister Fitzgerald Hinds said an increase in the speed limit for highways to 100 kmph was being reviewed.
Rowley was asked about the situation on Saturday night. He said while he would leave the determination of the country’s speed limits to the “experts,” in his view “different roads should carry different speed limits.”
“When I got my licence, whenever that was, that’s how it was. There were 30-mile zones and 50-mile zones and so on. We have different qualities of roads in the country and they certainly require, from a safety standpoint, that they carry different speed limits. The speed limit on the Solomon Hochoy Highway certainly ought not to be the same one on the Eastern Main Road,” Rowley said.
COY ON RESHUFFLE
Asked if there were any plans for a reshuffle of his Cabinet, Rowley said:
“You can never be satisfied with everything. There is always room for improvement across the board.”
“I don’t want this country to lose sight of the fact where we came from... we have come from a place of great chaos.”
“We have a Cabinet made up of a lot of new people, young people and some experienced people. The majority of people are new and they are finding their feet and we are a whole lot better off than when we came in.
“The government of Trinidad and Tobago in September 2015 was a disaster zone and we have systematically set about in a very sane and sober way to give governance in Trinidad and Tobago that gives us the best chance to succeed and that will continue and when the time comes for adjustments to be made to the Cabinet, we will make the adjustments.”