Rowley: UNC magnet for people cops looking for

POLITICAL leader of the PNM Dr Keith Rowley says the UNC is trying to trick the public as he attacked the integrity of people affiliated with the party.

Speaking at the PNM’s election rally at Diego Martin Central Secondary School on April 16, Rowley said the UNC is “taking people for fools” as he said there was a considerable number of people associated with the party who have questionable pasts, have been in trouble with the law, or are even facing charges.

“UNC is a magnet for people who the police looking for,” he claimed.

He warned voters to carefully consider who will play key roles in the next government if the UNC were to win.

Rowley questioned the integrity of people connected to the party such as former FIFA Vice President Jack Warner, Anil Roberts, David Lee, Dr Roodal Moonilal and Ravi Ratiram.

He also attacked former Strategic Services Agency (SSA) director Roger Best who was seen wearing a UNC-branded jersey at an event in support of Moonilal.

Best was placed on administrative leave before being terminated on May 18, 2024.

Rowley said he was forced to get rid of Best after he received information that the SSA was “penetrated by people who were outside of the agency” and was engaging in certain activities.

Rowley stopped short of saying more about what the activities were, but addressed the scandal surrounding the SSA’s purchase of two military grade sniper rifles which saw Best arrested and questioned, but not charged.

Rowley said Best was responsible for making the purchase without informing the cabinet, the prime minister, or anybody else who should have been told.

“To this day, instead of answering the question as to how you come to buy that, without a budget to buy it, without the cabinet approval, and that is now a matter which is attracting the attention of the police, he could put on a UNC jersey and head for a public meeting to go and tell the country he's here to support Moonilal.

“Is them so who looking to be in the Parliament,” he said.

Rowley also asked how the UNC intended to deliver on a number of election promises and challenged the veracity of some of their boasts.

He said he had been able to watch the election campaign from the sidelines for the first time in many years, and he had noticed the UNC was lacking substance.

“They are specialists in talking about what you're not getting, specialists in talking about what they going to give you, (and) spreading fear, hatred and absolute horse manure.

“They know that they have nothing else in a campaign.”

He accused Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar of lying to the public about her accomplishments as prime minister.

“I heard her in an advertisement trying to give you the impression that they are the party of education, and the party that does something for families and young people (and) that they built 104 schools.”

“If the UNC had to build a 104 schools during their short stay in office, it had to be that we had a lot of this country that had no schools.”

Rowley said the UNC was asked to name ten of the schools they built but could not answer.

“In 2015 all they did was award almost 100 contracts to contractors and then they left the stage.

“When we came into government we met all these contractors with these contracts (but) no budget to back it.”

He said the contracts totalled more than $2.5 billion with about ten per cent of that figure already paid to contractors via mobilisation fees.

“The contractors had that and then they descended upon our government to say, ‘Look I have a contract to build a school or to repair a school,’ all at the same time, and that is when the pressure was upon us.

“Clearly our priority couldn't be to go and try to build 100 schools or to repair 100 schools so we systematically and responsibly took the school programme and carried it on.

“We've built a number of those schools, we've opened some of them, and the programme is still going on. Yet that woman is there talking about we (the UNC) built 104 schools. So when UNC wins, everybody loss.”