Latest update January 6th, 2025 4:00 AM
T&T PM Rowley to bow out of elected politics before general elections
Kaieteur News- Days after Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) declared a state of emergency due to heightened criminal activity – the twin island Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley announced that he will be stepping down before the end of his presidency bringing the curtain down to 45 years of service to his country.
Within hours of a massacre at Prizgar Lands, Laventille bringing the country’s murder toll to 623, the Prime Minister on Monday morning authorised the declaration of a state of emergency.
“The circumstances warranting the declaration of the public emergency are based on the advice of the TTPS to the National Security Council of heightened criminal activity which endangers the public safety,” it was announced.
T&T’s Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley
During a briefing with local media on Friday, Dr. Rowley said, “I don’t want to go through another Covid…I will not be offering myself again to represent anyone either in Trinidad or in Tobago, 45 years is a long time.”
He also thanked those who have supported his political career. Dr Rowley said he will remain the leader of the People’s National Movement (PNM) party as preparations are ongoing for nominations.
He said, “I represent the people of Diego Martin West who have supported me resolutely from 1991 to now and I will thank them appropriately and I will assure that they are not left adrift.”
However, the Prime Minister outlined, “This year would be 45 years that I have been in public life in Trinidad and Tobago I offered myself for serve in Tobago in 1981 and in Trinidad in 1987, to now. And at the last election, 2020, when I announced the PNM victory in Baliser House, I said to this country, I will not be doing that again. And I meant it. And I’ve kept it.”
He continued: “But I will not be offering myself as I have just said…before the end of the legal limit of this term I will resign this office and go off to my family.”
The prime minister said his first job on the public payroll was to plant grass on the Hope Estate in Tobago at seven dollars a day, and then he taught school before entering the political arena in 1980.
He said that he brought into the political area a number of young people who are still in government and about to complete a second term.
He said these people were now prepared to take the country forward.
Rowley said he would be at the PNM’s Parliamentary retreat this weekend.
The Prime Minister walked away and entertained no questions after his statement about his retirement.
Rowley has served as Prime Minister for two consecutive terms since winning the general election in 2015.
He said of the country “I could see a deterioration of the quality of the society fueled by the availability of the mechanism to spread your bile, the absence of certain kinds of civilities, and of course, more me than us”.
(Modified from Trinidad Express)
(T&T PM Rowley to bow out of elected politics before general elections)
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