Opposition leader Dr Keith Rowley yesterday criticised all attempts to link Police Complaints Authority Director David West to the People’s National Movement (PNM). Rowley, in a series to text exchanges with the T&T Guardian yesterday, was also critical of any move to label the growing discord between Attorney General Anand Ramlogan and West as “political”.
West has accused Ramlogan of attempting to “pervert the course of justice” by asking him (West) to withdraw a witness statement he made in support of Rowley in a defamation case between the two politicians relating to the Section 34 fiasco. The reports stated that West was approached to be a PNM senator back in 2012 but refused the offer.
“I was the Opposition Leader in 2012 and I know of no such authorised development, directly, indirectly,” Rowley said. He said the people attempting to implicate West as a PNM supporter hid behind the “sources” moniker. “As for ‘sources’ say he was likely to take up a key post if the PNM formed the next Government? Once again there is absolutely no basis for this unwarranted speculation,” he said.
Rowley was also disdainful of the people that sought to undermine “matters of a serious nature” with speculation and “busy spreading gossip and rumour to implicate serious people in self serving spin and foolishness and naked lies”. “There has to be some decency and professional trust in this country,” Rowley said. “It is unacceptable and irresponsible,” he said. Rowley said those seeking to paint West with the PNM brush are “creating public mischief”.
“Because of the office I hold, I can speak to those issues and they are fabrication designed to steer the public away from having guilty people be made accountable to the embarrassing truths which now threaten to unmask them all,” Rowley said. He said the attempts to undermine the PNM with these rumours was the work of “specialist loopholer rats on a sinking ship who hope to escape their inevitable drowning”.