Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley says he spent the last four days wondering whether he could have done anything which would have changed fate and kept former national security minister Martin Joseph from dying on Monday.
Rowley said so during a wake for the former People’s National Movement (PNM) strategist on Wednesday night. Joseph drowned on Monday morning after going for a swim in Grange Bay, Tobago. He was visiting his friend Andre Monteil at the time.
Rowley was in Tobago at the time, preparing to leave after spending time with his family.
In a speech to give tribute to Joseph, Rowley recited a series of events, from slaughtering two goats and five ducks to a conversation with friends, which occurred over last weekend in Tobago, trying to connect the dots to see whether any decision he could have made would have saved Joseph’s life.
Rowley had considered meeting Joseph that morning before departing for Trinidad. He had also been asked to go swimming at Grange Bay earlier that morning.
“On Friday, we slaughtered two goats and five ducks. We had a cook and had a nice lime on Sunday. I was due to return to Trinidad on Monday and Martin (Joseph) was due back on Tuesday. I hadn’t seen Andre (Monteil) over the weekend I was there so the only time I could have seen him had I chosen to go was Monday morning,” Rowley said.
Rowley said it was while he was getting ready to return to Trinidad that he saw a series of missed calls on his phone, returned the call and was told Joseph was dead.
“Since then to now I have been thinking, if I had gone to breakfast by Andre, maybe they might not have gone for a walk. And if they hadn’t gone for that walk, maybe Martin might not have gone into the sea,” Rowley speculated.
“We all just have to accept that there are powers beyond us. I kept thinking how all these little things that come together, was their anything that could have been done differently under my control that would have had a different outcome and the answer is I don’t know.”
Rowley praised Joseph’s drive and said he stood out as a perfectionist. “I don’t know many perfectionists who are doers. Martin Joseph was a perfectionist who was a doer.”
Rowley spoke about the 2012 Tobago elections, during which time Joseph ran the PNM’s campaign and worked hard to ensure the PNM got 12 seats.
“I would have settled for 11 seats but he wanted all 12, and he knew we had to get 12. He was the consummate perfectionist doer,” Rowley said.
“He was a different kind of man in the political arena, a man who prefaced his work by saying he was not doing it for any personal gain.”
Other verbal tributes came from PNM chairman Franklyn Khan, former Port-of-Spain mayor Murchison Browne and former president of the Senate Linda Baboolal.
Khan said he owed his political career to Joseph, after Joseph gave up his seat to be Khan’s campaign manager for the Ortoire/ Mayaro constituency in 2002.
Even as Joseph was praised and remembered, some subtle digs were taken at the People’s Partnership Government’s expense.
While Browne praised Joseph for stopping the rise in kidnappings in this country during his tenure as national security minister, he added that Joseph avoided “unnecessary states of emergency.”
He said while Joseph was patient there was a sense of injustice in how he was treated by the media.
Baboolal said she felt a stab in her heart when she heard the news, as if her own brother had died.
In fact, Baboolal’s own brother had died on the same day about five years before.
Joseph’s funeral will take place at 10 am tomorrow at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Port-of-Spain after which he will be laid to rest at the Lapeyrouse cemetery.