PM returns from Barbados

THE Prime Minister has returned home from Barbados where he attended the 48th regular meeting of the Caricom heads of government conference.

A statement issued by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) on February 22, said Dr Rowley returned at 2.16 pm on the same day.

The conference was Rowley's last as prime minister.

Last December, Rowley confirmed his intention to retire from electoral politics before this year's general election.

Energy Minister Stuart Young has been selected to succeed him and Hans Des Vignes has been selected as the PNM's candidate for Diego Martin West.

Young acted as prime minister while Rowley was in Barbados from February 19-21.

At the conference's closing news conference on February 21, Rowley said Caricom leaders have agreed to classify certain criminal acts involving guns as acts of terrorism.

He currently holds the national security portfolio in Caricom's quasi-cabinet.

Rowley said notwithstanding social considerations, regional leaders agreed the changing nature of crime necessitates that certain acts of violence in public spaces, now be regarded as acts of terrorism.

"We are talking here about indiscriminate shootings in the public space where the perpetrators endanger all and sundry."

Rowley said, "In order to address that, we believe that the legislation needs to be cognisant of what exactly we are experiencing now against what the existing legislation anticipated."

Caricom, he continued, has engaged the services of a former Belize attorney general "to review the legislative templates and to come up with new legislative proposals for consideration by the heads for changes to be made on the legislative side to treat with what we are experiencing against what we are surprised by."

Rowley said many of these crimes are committed by illegal guns and 90 per cent of them come from one source.

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness supported Rowley's comments.

Holness said this action was warranted because the level of crime being experienced in the region was not normal criminality and it was above the capacity of regular law enforcement to deal with.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Guyana President Dr Mohammed Irfaan Ali, Holness and other regional leaders at the briefing thanked Rowley for his 40 years of service to Caricom.

Holness thanked Rowley for working with him as a new prime minister in 2016 to restore TT-Jamaica relations which were at an all-time low then.

He said those relations are now stronger than they have ever been.

After jokingly referring to the TT-Guyana "curry chicken vs chicken curry" debate, Ali thanked Rowley for his support for Guyana and Caricom.

Rowley expressed his thanks to his regional counterparts.

He said the piece of parting advice he would leave them is the region is always stronger when it is united.