Two Government ministers fell ill this year, but while one is back on the job the other remains hospitalised in Washington. It was also a year which saw another Cabinet reshuffle, the third in 22 months and the ministerial appointment of a T&T citizen with dual citizenship, an appointment which had to be revoked hours after it was made and the oath retaken when the issue was resolved.
2017 was also a year when there appeared to be a diplomatic snub against the Prime Minister and a neophyte was given one of the most important diplomatic postings available.
As 2016 gave way to 2017, the country learnt that Energy Minister Franklin Khan, who fell in while on vacation in December 2016, would have to undergo heart surgery. The triple by-pass surgery was done on January 8 and Khan was off the job for more than three months until early April.
By September, Public Administration and Communications minister Maxie Cuffie suffered a stroke and was admitted to the intensive care unit at St Clair Medical Centre in Port-of-Spain.
Cuffie was eventually transferred to a medical institution in Washington DC for physical rehabilitation and remained there up to late December. Relatives were quoted as saying he is speaking now and his condition is improving significantly. Relatives and Government also denied reports he was brain dead, assuring that he would return to the country by year end.
Cuffie was elected as the Member of Parliament for La Horquetta/Talparo in the September 2015 general election.
Also this year, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley returned to a medical centre in California, United States, for a medical check-up. It was a follow-up to one made in August 2016 when he was given a “good report” by his doctors.
In late June, Port-of-Spain South MP Marlene McDonald, who was fired from the Cabinet by PM Rowley in March of 2016, was sworn-in as the new Minister of Public Utilities.
Her appointment came after Rowley advised President Anthony Carmona to revoke the assignment of Fitzgerald Hinds as Minister of Public Utilities and reassign him as Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs to assist” Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Faris Al-Rawi.
Hinds, the MP for Laventille West, was first appointed to the Cabinet as Minister of Works and Transport on September 11, 2015, until he was reassigned as Minister of Public Utilities during a Cabinet reshuffle on October 30, 2016.
But McDonald’s return would be short lived. On July 2, three days after she took the ministerial oath, President Carmona was advised to revoke her appointment “with immediate effect.”
The reason for the revocation had to do with an uninvited guest who attended her swearing-in ceremony at President’s House, Cedric “Burkey” Burke. Burke was held during the 2011 state of emergency and charged with being a gang leader. The charges were eventually dropped.
McDonald admitted in an interview that she had invited Burke and Kenroy Dopwell to President’s House. Sources at President’s House confirmed that McDonald requested two extra invitations for the ceremony but didn’t get names. When Burke arrived at President’s House he was made to hold on in the waiting area, but when McDonald arrived all guests, including Burke and Dopwell, were ushered upstairs.
Prime Minister Rowley later called McDonald to a meeting at the Diplomatic Centre, when she was informed her appointment was being revoked. McDonald remains on the back bench in the Parliament and continues to be an outspoken advocate on behalf of the People’s National Movement.
Rowley added the Public Utilities portfolio to his own plate and it took more than a month before he announced McDonald’s replacement in the person of banker Robert Le Hunte. He took the oath on August 24, but the appointment was subsequently revoked when it was discovered he had dual citizenship in Ghana.
Rowley said the issue of the Ghanian citizenship had come to him after the appointment was made and as a result Le Hunte was not qualified under section 42(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago to be appointed as a senator. Late on Independence Day, Le Hunte re-took the oath as Minister of Public Utilities.
In the intervening days he had returned to Ghana and revoked his citizenship in that country. Le Hunte was bestowed the citizenship by the Ghanaian government in December 2016 as part of a policy of recognition by that government introduced by President Kwame Entuma, to offer citizenship to Africans in the diaspora. Le Hunte, who was managing director of Republic Bank in Ghana, was selected for the citizenship for having brought in the largest foreign direct investment portfolio with the purchase of the HFC Bank by Republic Bank.
US President Donald Trump called Prime Minister Rowley on February 19. The White House said the call was “to facilitate cooperation on shared priorities.” A brief paragraph on the website of the White House on the call said “the two leaders reaffirmed the strong security partnership and agreed to continue close coordination in the fight against terrorism and transnational organized crime. President Trump invited Rowley to visit Washington, DC, in the coming months.” That visit did not take place this past year.
But it was also a year when an announced visit of the Prime Minister to China was cancelled. In early November, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young announced that Rowley had been invited to China to attend a high-level meeting of world leaders themed “Work together to Build a Community of Shared Future for Mankind and a Beautiful World,” in Beijing, China, from November 30-December 3, with a continuing visit from December 4-9, 2017.
The Chinese indicated there would be nine other world leaders invited to these meetings. But a week after the announcement was made the Government announced that Ambassador Song Yumin paid a visit to Young and indicated the Chinese government wanted to replace the invitation to the high level meetings, and would instead invite Rowley to pay an official visit to China next year,
The country’s longest serving diplomat and retired head of the Public Service, Reginald Dumas, said it was “highly unusual” for China to withdraw an invitation to a foreign leader, adding it seemed to “represent on the face of it a snub.” Former minister in the Ministry of Finance Mariano Browne also commented on the decision by the Chinese, saying he also felt it was a diplomatic snub.
The comments caused a war of words with Young lashing out at Dumas and Browne, saying they should not comment on matters about which they do not have all the facts.
Almost simultaneously with the Chinese ‘snub,’ came the announcement that Government was appointing PNM activist Makeda Antoine to the post of this country’s Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva Switzerland.
Dumas criticised the appointment, saying he did not believe Antoine had the experience to head such an important mission. He said the position requires the person appointed to deal with a number of agencies, including the World Health Organisation, UNESCO, the FAO, UN Industrial Development Organisation and International Labour Organisation, adding he did not believe Antoine was so qualified. The appointment was also said to have affected senior diplomatic professionals within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
It was also a year when the Government and Opposition traded words over the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). As the New Year turned the issue, which remained on the table from late 2016, returned on the agenda with the banking sector pleading with Parliament to pass the legislation.
After much toing and froing the legislation was passed unanimously in the House of Representatives on February 23, 2017, with all 39 MPs present on that day voting in favour of the amended bill. The legislation was also passed in the Senate with 29 in favour, none against and one (1) abstention.
The legislation enables local financial institutions to report to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on accounts held by US clients via this country’s Board of Inland Revenue. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is part of US tax evasion law.
Finance Minister Colm Imbert thanked the Opposition for its support. He said “I agree that there were some small points in the legislation, small points, little points, that we have dealt with in the exercise. What I am happy about is that we are able to reach consensus.”
Adding that “Parliament is here to pass laws; forget the old talk and the fighting that goes on. It goes without saying that the laws must be good.”
The Opposition uses the exact same reason when it voted against the Anti-Gang Bill brought to Parliament several months later in November.
Government said the legislation was critical for the police to deal with gang leaders and the growing number of gang members in the country ,and would make it an offence to be a member of a gang, to be in possession of a bullet-proof vest, to participate in, or contribute to the activities of a gang, to support or invite support for a gang, or to harbour or conceal gang members or recruit persons to a gang.
Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi quoted figures from the Organised Crime Intelligence Unit, which he said indicated there were close to 2,459 suspected gang members across the country whose names, whereabouts and alleged activities are known to authorities. He said members of the OCIU were hard at work gathering intelligence across the nine police divisions and the information would be used to root out criminal elements if Government’s amended anti-gang legislation was passed.
When the vote was taken after 1 am on December 7, the bill failed to receive the required three-fifths majority to make it law, as 21 Government members voted for, while 12 Opposition MPs voted against with one abstention.
Opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar lay the blame for the defeat of the bill at the doors of Prime Minister Rowley. She said: “When we put forward a recommendation for a two year sunset clause, the Prime Minister said, ‘I not doing that,’ and then he says, after one in the morning, ‘Put it to the vote.”
The legislation cannot return to Parliament for six months.
But AG Al-Rawi said all eyes will be on the Opposition in the New Year when the Government brings an anti-corruption package which seeks to deal with the scourge of criminal activity which had resulted in billions of dollars being lost to crime.
Quoting from a report compiled by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) which will be laid in Parliament in January, he said there had been a 500 per cent increase in the monetary value of suspicious transactions and suspicious activity in the period 2016-2017, with the monetary value growing from $4.5 billion to $22.2 billion. He said the transactions were related to “criminal associations including gangs.” He said the legislative package to be brought in the New Year includes stand-alone civil asset forfeiture and the way land is registered in Trinidad and Tobago.
As the year came to a close the country heard from Acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams that Emailgate allegations levelled against former prime minister and now Opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar in 2013, by then Opposition leader and now Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, had been found to be of “very little of substance,” and the matter was now with the DPP.
The commissioner’s statement prompted calls from the Opposition for Rowley to resign. But both Rowley and the Attorney General advised the Opposition that it was not the first time “we have been told it’s at an end.” Al-Rawi subsequently said “the Emailgate saga is far from over.”
The Government also held fast to the position this year that despite allegations in the public domain about Chief Justice Ivor Archie, there was nothing to “trigger Section 137 of the Constitution” which would begin an investigation into the CJ.
It was alleged among other things this past year that the CJ made recommendations to the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) for housing for persons, an allegation which he has confirmed. It is also alleged that he sought to influence judges to change their state provided security, an allegation which the CJ said is “false.”
The Law Association has since retained senior counsel to advise a committee of the association, which was set up to investigate and verify the allegations against the CJ before determining whether any recommendation can be made to the PM to act under section 137 of the Constitution.
At the end of the year, a cloud stood over the head of the Minister in the Office of the Attorney General and Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young over developments in his personal life.
The details of the story spoke to a marital dispute between Young and his partner and alleged that he had moved in to an apartment owned by a senior official of Petrotrin. Asked whether there was a conflict of interest, Young declined comment, telling the media there had been no impropriety on his part. In a Facebook post he admitted his relationship with his “partner has ended and we have parted ways on amicable terms.”
But Al-Rawi condemned the “attack” on Young, linking it to the work which he is doing. He said “those who have problems with Minister Young’s immense ability and capacity will obviously do anything in their power to try and malign Minister Young. If you can’t attack someone professionally you must expect them to pry into your private life.”
It said: “The Honourable Prime Minister and his wife state without hesitation and without fear of contradiction that neither of them operates any foreign bank account outside of Trinidad and Tobago.”
The statement said any “innuendoes or assertions however made by Dr Roodal Moonilal or any other person contradictory to this are nothing but patent falsehoods concocted by such persons as a deliberate slanderous conspiracy for self-serving political gain.”