I will clear my good name

A DEFIANT Dr Keith Rowley vowed yesterday to fight “with every muscle in my body” to  defend his name and assured his constituents that he would be vindicated by the findings of a Commission of Inquiry. Declaring that everything else, including his position as a Cabinet Minister, is temporary, but his good name is permanent, the Diego Martin West MP accounted to his constituents on the two major controversies affecting him — the Mason Hall Development Project and the Parliament tearoom brawl. He said the allegations were the result of an orchestrated attempt to damage him, and by extension the PNM. Rowley, who could be facing an assault charge as a result of the complaint filed by Fyzabad MP Chandresh Sharma, declaring that if he ended up in court for the tearoom affair, he would “welcome it.”

“I would love to see my lawyers ask all the relevant questions,” he declared in his address at a constituency meeting at the Point Cumana Community Centre. Rowley insisted that he was innocent and claimed he had a verbal altercation with  Sharma and was subsequently portrayed as “some ruffian” beating people in the Parliament and putting the Opposition MP in hospital. “I am from Mason Hall and when I beat Sharma, Sharma will know, and you will know, and there would be no question about it!” he thundered, to an appreciative audience. “Imagine me, a big ‘hard back’ man, want to beat Sharma, and I slap him and fling a teacup at him?” he asked incredulously,  as the crowd roared its approval. On the Mason Hall/Landate issue, Rowley stressed that he had removed himself from the project, which was being handled entirely by his wife.

He conceded, that unlike Basdeo Panday, he was prepared to admit his wife was his, and therefore, he had a beneficial interest in anything she did. “Until the law is changed where my wife can’t own land, can’t develop property, can’t hire a contractor, Ganga Singh and Panday and the whole seaband could go to hell,” the Diego Martin West MP asserted. “And I don’t have to wait for Rootsman to tell me where my wife get the money,” he said, quoting the words of the calypso “Is she nanny give she that.” He said his wife was an attorney with a leading law firm. Apart from that, he had been continuously employed for the last 30 years.

“I don’t go to whore houses . . . I don’t go to casinos, so if I want a load of sand, I could pay for it,” he declared to applause. Rowley said since 1986 his grandfather had given him the land  on which his Mason Hall home was built and he had waited 31 years  to construct his home. Apart from that property, which was constructed while he was in Opposition, Rowley said he personally had not developed one foot of land anywhere else. Rowley reminded his supporters that when the UNC couldn’t deal with him, it used its power as the government to  throw him out of the Parliament for two months. Now, it was attempting to use its power as Opposition to put him out of the Parliament again, he claimed.