LEAD TRINIDAD-Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley announces plans to resign.

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Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley and his wife, Sharon, following the general election victory in August 2020

SCARBOROUGH, Tobago, CMC—Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley announced Friday that he would resign from office by August this year, before the end of the current term of his ruling People’s National Movement (PNM).

The first-term incumbent PNM, led by Rowley, won 22 of the 41 seats in the 2020 general election to form a second five-year majority government by defeating the opposition United National Congress (UNC), led by Opposition Leader Kamla Persad Bissessar.

Following the general elections victory, Rowley, the country’s seventh head of government, signaled immediately that the party is in transition, as he no longer expects to contest another poll in Trinidad and Tobago.

“I am not one of those politicians who believe when you come into office, you should go out feet first. I have places to go and people to see. Still, more importantly, I commit to ensuring that this is a transition period in the PNM. As the longest-serving member in the Parliament …I have a duty and a responsibility during this term to fashion the PNM’s future by ensuring that our young people are developed in such a way that when I am no longer in this position to announce an election date that the country will not be deprived of the leadership it deserves.

“This is my period to ensure that the young people I have been mentoring move into greater responsibility during that period. So, Trinidad and Tobago are in a period of transition. Still, I will not shirk my responsibility to the people of Trinidad and Tobago who have elected me for these five years,'” Rowley said then from the party’s headquarters to a limited number of people, including his wife, Sharon.

The small crowd at the party’s headquarters was in keeping with the measures put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), and Rowley, whose speech was broadcast on radio and television here, said, “Tonight, against all odds, in a most challenging situation, the PNM has once again been called to service in the government of Trinidad and Tobago.

Rowley, 75, who is in Tobago for the Christmas Season and will also participate in screening candidates for the two seats currently held by the PNM, told reporters Friday that he had always indicated his intention to step down from politics after 45 years in public life.

“I am here with my colleagues this weekend, and they will be told that I will not be offering myself again to represent anyone in Trinidad or Tobago. Forty- five years is a long time.”

Rowley, a volcanologist by training, obtained his doctorate in geology, specializing in geochemistry. He entered politics in 1981 and unsuccessfully contested the Tobago West seat in that year’s general election.

To date, he is the only PNM candidate to have contested a seat in a general election in both Tobago and Trinidad.

He reminded reporters that his first job on the public payroll was to plant grass on the Hope Estate in Tobago at seven dollars (One TT dollar=US$0.16 cents) a day, then becoming a teacher before entering the political arena in 1980.

“This year would be 45 years that I have been in public life in Trinidad and Tobago. I offered to serve in Tobago in 1981 and Trinidad in 1987, to this day. And at the last election, 2020, when I announced the PNM victory in Baliser House, I told this country I would not do that again. And I meant it. And I’ve kept it.

“Forty-five years is a long time, and I would like to say thank you appropriately along the way to all those who have supported my effort and benefited from it. I hope to have positively impacted this country somewhere.

“As we settle Tobago’s screening tomorrow, I continue to be the political leader of the PNM. We will call for nominations where I represent the people of Diego Martin West who have supported me resolutely from 1991 to now, and I will thank them appropriately and ensure that they are not left adrift, but I would not be offering myself as I have just said.

“And I would say something else: Before the end of the legal limits of this term, I will resign from this office and go off to my family. Thank you all very much, and see you all again sometime soon,” Rowley said as he ended the news conference without asking any questions about his shock announcement.

Rowley, who served as Prime Minister for two consecutive terms since winning the general election in 2015, serving in various portfolios in government since his entry into politics, commented on the state of politics in the Twin Island Republic.

He said he and his colleagues have been under “relentless attack from some people. Many never plant another seed in this country…never plant a tree, but they relentlessly attack people who work in public life and contribute to national development.

“And they do it with hate and vitriol. Unfortunately, that’s what it is. But for me, it wasn’t always so. 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”.

Rowley, who served in the Senate in 1987, said that he had brought into the political arena several young people “who had served at that time one term, many of them are still in government about to complete their second term, experienced (and) some of them with nine or 10 years of service in the government.

“So the government and people of Trinidad and Tobago have a cadre of people, mainly young people who came into public service without with all its whats and have prepared themselves to take this country forward.”

Rowley said he had experience managing the country during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and was happy to receive today a report from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) indicating that reports of another outbreak similar to COVID-19 were untrue.

“The international agency has just confirmed that there is no need to worry and that the story about a state of emergency in China is incorrect. I was particularly pleased to hear that because God knows we do not want to go through another COVID,” he added.

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