People’s National Movement (PNM) leader Dr Keith Rowley is flatly denying that the nonselection of four longstanding MPs is part of his agenda to create a yes-man squad within the PNM. In a sit-down interview with the Sunday Guardian on Friday at his Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, office, the party leader also rejected any talk that he was an incipient dictator.
“I am not that. That is the view of people who do not understand what they are talking about. I mean, would a dictator give up office? Have you ever heard of a person who is a dictator or a person who is in love with office give up?” he asked
Rowley recalled that back in 2008, he challenged then prime minister— and his boss— Patrick Manning over his policies and was fired from office.
“If that was the end of my political career I would have said I had a good time serving that public and this is my record and this is my period of service. It has been extended as a result of other reasons and, of course, I was sitting in the position of leader of the PNM until 2017 and I voluntarily gave it up and put my office up for election by one man, one vote. Is that the action of a dictator?
“You tell me one dictator who gave up office and come back in a democratic election. Tell me one, just one. So those who use the term probably do not know the meaning of the term and are not familiar with the PNM exercises,” Rowley said.
Although Rowley heads up the party’s screening committee, he denied any suggestion that he controlled the selection process.
“That is easy for some people to say, but if you ask them to demonstrate that they cannot.
“We stand by our process and the vast majority of party members subscribe and understand that process and accept it.
“Usually a lot of what you are hearing along those lines come from people outside the party,” he said.
Four well-known names, including two-term incumbent for Diego Martin Central Dr Amery Browne, have already been rejected by the screening committee.
Despite a massive show of support for Browne by his constituents, Rowley is confident that there has been no major fallout from the choices made by the screening committee.
“That is normal...this is all part of the landscape,” he said.
“Remember screening is a selection process, like the West Indies team.
Not everyone could get on the team, but at the end of the day we are backing the West Indies
Rowley said corruption, crime, and accountability and transparency were the essential pillars of the PNM’s 2015 general election campaign. He said health care and education would also form part of the PNM’s campaign battle.
“We cannot continue having exchange and exchange and you do not fix the systems. This is sufficiently important.
“We believe that this is fundamental to the other problems. When you do not have proper oversight then everything below will go haywire. We believe you have to fix it at the top.
“This is rooted in the Constitution ‘there shall be a Cabinet and the Cabinet shall be accountable to Parliament,” he said.
However, Rowley maintained that national security remained a major issue even as it was in the Manning era of 2007/2008.
“We have chronic violent crime in our communities which has not improved under this Government. Of course after four, five years they are not seeing improvement they launch a campaign telling you a lot has improved but we are not seeing that,” he said.
The screening process
Of the screening process Rowley said: “It is a selection process. You are only allowed to select one candidate. Sometimes you get five or six and each person may have their preference, and sometimes if you have one candidate and that candidate for one reason or the other may not be, may not find favour with the screening committee.
“One of the things we did do, we broadened the screening committee. It used to be a political leader assisted by people, now it is an 11-man committee where each person is on the committee as of right. The PNM candidates are chosen by a body of people of the party who get on the screening committee by virtue of the offices they hold in the party.
So it is not like some of the other parties where the leader says ‘Ok, you will be on the committee, you will be on the committee and appoint a committee.’
“No, no, no, from the time we have our national elections the screening committee is selected by virtue of the office that you hold.
“If you are elected lady vice-chairman, you have a place on the committee, if you are voted deputy political leader, automatically you have a place on the committee.
“If you are the general secretary, the PRO, you are automatically on the committee, so those positions make up the committee no matter who are in those positions.
“That is the screening committee and they are the ones who examine nominees and choose who the PNM should be represented by.”
With the Diego Martin Central seat still up for grabs, Rowley said the party would continue to “examine everybody.”
“Once you get one nomination you are entitled to come for examination and once you are examined you are in the mix and of course, the screening committee can make decisions along the way.
“So this is all part of the screening landscape and, of course, there are usually some disappointments and even anger, but at the end of the day the process has worked well for us and we are 60 years old. Some parties do not even last 60 days,” he said.
PNM’s new manifesto
Rowley said the PNM manifesto would be introduced only when Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar calls the election date.
“The manifesto comes with the election. That is how it comes, but the work in getting us into a position where we can deliver a total manifesto, that work has been done...in the meantime in the Opposition, the parliamentary arm has been monitoring the Government, while the party arm has been running the party,” he said.
He said he wanted the screening process to be completed earlier rather than later to give constituents a chance to know who was their representative.
“We will choose our candidates early to allow them to campaign more effectively. Before that [there was this] whole idea of a surprise candidate and you create a ‘who is the candidate?’ with a big surprise.
“We have a different approach now in that we let the candidates be known and we select them more slowly and more carefully and I hope, I dare say more thoroughly and if things do not go well in one or two instances you have chance to, you have time to fix it, to readjust it and so on and we have been doing that.
“Right now we are down to three more, we have three more to do and that is the end of it.
“I think we have done remarkably well at this stage, having our candidates ready, so whenever the election is called the PNM is ready,” he said. —reporting by Reshma Ragoonath
Look out for part 2 of Dr Rowley’s interview in tomorrow’s Guardian as he discusses the PNM’s plans to make government cleaner and leaner should the party win the 2015 general election.