ROWLEY’S VACATION FROM CRIME

THE sight of a Prime Minister heading off on a vacation is rare in Trinidad and Tobago’s political history.

In fact, historians would be hard-pressed to name a predecessor to Dr. Keith Rowley who packed his bags and announced to the nation that he was going on a family holiday.

Previous leaders took time off during official business abroad or travelled for crucial medical attention or important family matters.

There is a story of the first PNM Cabinet, during which senior minister Dr. Patrick Solomon told Prime Minister Dr. Eric Williams: “Chief, you look tired; when are you going on your long leave?”

Williams reportedly retorted: “Long leave? What long leave? You take me for some blasted civil servant!”

Rowley altered that landscape almost as soon as he became Prime Minister in September 2015.

He jetted off to Jamaica, ostensibly to mend trade fences, but was seen enjoying social events with Jamaican leader Andrew Holness.

Rowley later reported that his week in Jamaica was his hardest work “in a long, long, long time.”

Within months in national office, he was derided by one analyst as “an inveterate escapist, a shirker.”

Over the years, he has had extended stays abroad following official functions, or short vacations, such as a golf-playing stint in Barbados last year.

After Rowley took a mysterious international break in 2022, Professor Selwyn Cudjoe wrote that the Prime Minister “is parent-in-chief of the nation but absents himself from the island for three weeks without accounting to the public why he was away for so long…”

He recently took a week off following a conference in Guyana.

A Prime Minister is entitled to vacation, of course, but most forgo such holiday in favour of serving the nation, especially during crises.

On top of that, Rowley’s work ethic has always been questioned, even when he was a government minister serving under Patrick Manning.

As Prime Minister, he raised eyebrows in playing golf while the country was at work.

“I couldn’t help but wonder if Eric Williams, A.N.R. Robinson, Patrick Manning or any other senior public servant would be seen playing golf on a workday,” Cudjoe sneered.

Rowley took the solemn occasion of Manning’s death in 2016 to speak of his insistence, while a Cabinet Minister, on taking his annual vacation.

Most intriguingly, in 2019 Rowley criticised the work ethic of public officers.

“Most of them produce absolutely nothing when the day comes,” he slammed.

“Collect a salary at the end of the month and make the most noise when pay is late.”

On another occasion, he called on workers to produce “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.”

Even more disturbing is Rowley’s penchant for vacations against a country ridden with social and economic emergencies, in particular an unrelenting crime crisis.

These calamities require hands-on and decisive leadership.

Rowley himself has concluded that T&T is “a violent society,” although he has not yet prescribed any solutions to the worsening disaster.

Instead, he is hurriedly seeking to win the electorate’s favour with taxpayer-funded hand-out projects, in typical PNM style.

He “must be more responsible” and “needs to attend to his duties in a humble manner,” Cudjoe has advocated.

But Rowley could hardly care for such advice as he laps up another vacation.