Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley Announces Plans to Resign

SCARBOROUGH, Tobago – Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley Friday announced that he would be resigning from office before the end of the current term of his ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) by August this year.

Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley and his wife, Sharon, following the general election victory in August 2020 (CMC file photo)The first-term incumbent PNM, led by Rowley, won 22 of the 41 seats in the 2020 general  election to form a second five-year term majority government by defeating the opposition United National Congress (UNC) that was led by Opposition Leader Kamla Persad Bissessar.

Following the victory in the general elections,  Rowley, the country’s seventh head of government,  signaled immediately that the party is in a transition as he no longer expects to contest another poll in Trinidad and Tobago.

“I am not one of those politicians who believe when you come into office, you should go out feet first. I have places to go and people to see, but more importantly I have a commitment to ensure that this is a period of transition in the PNM and as the longest serving member in the Parliament …I have a duty and a responsibility during this term to fashion the PNM’s future by ensuring that our young people are developed in such a way that when I am no longer in this position to announce an election date that the country will not be deprived of the leadership it deserves.

“This is my period to ensure that the young people I have been mentoring that they move into greater respo0nsibility during that period. So Trinidad and Tobago this is a period of transition but I will not shirk my responsibility to the people of Trinidad and Tobago who have elected me for this five year period,’” Rowley said then from the party’s headquarters to a limited number of people that included his wife, Sharon.

The small crowd at the party’s headquarters was in keeping with the measures put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and Rowley, whose speech was broadcast on radio and television here, said “tonight against all odds, in a most difficult situation, the PNM has once again been called to service in the government of Trinidad and Tobago.

Rowley, 75, who is in Tobago for the Christmas Season and will also participate in the screening of candidates for the two seats here currently held by the PNM, told reporters Friday that he had always indicated his intention to step down from politics after 45 years in public life.

“I am here with my colleagues this weekend and one of the things that they will be told is that I will not be offering myself again to represent anyone either in Trinidad or in Tobago. Forty- five years is a long time.”

Rowley, a volcanologist by training, who obtained his doctorate in geology specialising in geochemistry, entered politics in 1981, where he unsuccessfully contested the Tobago West seat in the general election of that year.

To date he has the distinction of being the only PNM candidate to have contested a seat in a general election in both Tobago and Trinidad.

He reminded reporters that his first job on the public payroll was to plant grass on the Hope Estate in Tobago at seven dollars (One TT dollar=US$0.16 cents) a day, then becoming a teacher before entering the political arena in 1980.

“This year would be 45 years that I have been in public life in Trinidad and Tobago. I offered myself for serve in Tobago in 1981 and in Trinidad in 1987, to now. And at the last election, 2020, when I announced the PNM victory in Baliser House, I said to this country, I will not be doing that again. And I meant it. And I’ve kept it.

“Forty-five years is a long time and I would like at this time to say thank you, appropriately along the way to all those who have supported my effort and to have benefited from, I hope I would have positively impacted this country somewhere, sometime.

“As we settle Tobago’s screening tomorrow, I continue to be the political leader of the PNM. We will call for nominations where I represent the people of Diego Martin West who have supported me resolutely from 1991 to now and I will thank them appropriately and ensure that they are not left adrift but I would not be offering myself as I have just said.

“And I would say something else before the end of the legal limits of this term I will resign this office and go off to my family. Thank you all very much and see you all again sometime soon,”  Rowley said as he ended the news conference without taking any questions on his shock announcement.

Rowley, who served as Prime Minister for two consecutive terms since winning the general election in 2015, serving in varius portfolios in government since his entry into politics, commented on the state of politics in the twin island republic.

He said he and his colleagues have been under “relentless attack from some people, many f them never plant an ochro seed in this country…never plant a tree, but they relentlessly attacking people who work in public life and who contribute to national development.

“And they do it with hate and vitriol. Unfortunately, that’s  what it is. But for me,  it wasn’t always so. I could see a deterioration of the quality of the society fueled by the availability of the mechanism to spread your bile, the absence of certain kinds of civilities, and of course, more me than us”.

Rowley, who served in the Senate in 1987, said that he had brought into the political arena a number of young people, “who had served at that time one term, many of them are still in government  about to complete their second term, experienced (and) some of them with nine or 10 years of service in the government.

“So the government and people of Trinidad and Tobago have a cadre of people, mainly young people  who came into public service without with all its whats and have prepared themselves to take this country forward”.

Rowley said he had the experience of managing the country during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and was happy to receive today a report from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) indicating that reports of another outbreak similar to COVD were untrue.

“The international agency has just confirmed to us that there is no need to worry and that the story about a state of emergency in  China is not correct. I was particularly pleased to hear that because God knows we do not want to go  through another COVID,”  he added.