Rowley to demit office as Trinidadian PM in mid-March
/ Our Today
administrator
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says his last day as leader of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago will be March 16.
Rowley, addressing the Lisa Morris-Julian Boulevard renaming ceremony in Arima on Wednesday morning (February 26), was content ending his nearly 35-year stint as a career politician on his own terms.
“As Prime Minister, I too am ending my tenure of public service—thankfully, not sadly—but with a certain amount of satisfaction that I have been able to have colleagues around me and been given the responsibility to chart a course of development for this country for a period of time,” he began.
“As I conclude a number of assignments in these weeks, I do so with some satisfaction that my presence among my colleagues and the national community would have contributed to national development and that I would have done something good with you and for you,” noted Rowley.
The 75-year-old Mason Hall native served as the seventh Trinbagonian prime minister, a position he will now entrust to Stuart Young—incoming head of the governing People’s National Movement (PNM).
Succeeding Patrick Manning as the fourth PNM leader, Rowley first assumed office as prime minister in May 2010; a short-lived appointment as the party was relegated to the opposition benches after being handed a major loss in the June general elections held that year.
With rising public sentiment against incumbent PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Rowley and the PNM returned to power after the September 2015 general election as his party secured 23 out of 41 seats in the House of Representatives to form the government.
Rowley also served as chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) from January to June 2021.
Previously known as the D’Abadie/O’Meara Road, the Rowley government moved to rename the heavily trafficked thoroughfare in honour of late Member of Parliament Lisa Morris-Julian, who died alongside her daughters in a house fire last December.
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