Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is de­scrib­ing as un­for­tu­nate, the war of words be­tween At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert James over the state of law­less­ness at the Light­house of the Lord Je­sus Christ church on the Heights of Gua­napo in Ari­ma. Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the state­ment dur­ing a news con­fer­ence in the Par­lia­ment Build­ing yes­ter­day. It fol­lowed a meet­ing of top se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Brigadier John Sandy, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams and Chief of De­fence Staff Brigadier Ed­mund Dil­lon at the same venue.

On Thurs­day, Ram­lo­gan said Philbert must take blame for the loot­ing which was tak­ing place at the church. The church is the sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. He said Philbert must give an ad­e­quate ex­pla­na­tion for fail­ing to pre­vent the loot­ing at the church over the past few weeks. Fail­ing this, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) must take ac­tion against him, the AG added. Hours lat­er, Philbert hit back, ac­cus­ing Ram­lo­gan of "con­tempt, dis­dain, bias and an­i­mos­i­ty for the of­fice of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice." Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the mat­ter was dis­cussed and "it's un­for­tu­nate–the words that have been back and for­ward–I think the mat­ter is be­ing han­dled and let's put that be­hind us and move on."

She said the se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty was a more crit­i­cal is­sue to be ad­dressed. "That is our pri­or­i­ty," she added. Asked specif­i­cal­ly if the AG might have crossed the lines in his ut­ter­ances, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was "not of that view." "Per­haps I would have said it in a dif­fer­ent way, each per­son has a dif­fer­ent man­ner of ex­press­ing them­selves...I may have done it dif­fer­ent­ly, but I am not of the view that he had over­stepped," she said. She al­so hint­ed that Philbert may have to take some blame for the sit­u­a­tion.

"One may al­so ask in terms of act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Philbert, his words as well...I think it is most un­for­tu­nate," she said. "I am say­ing it is un­for­tu­nate on both sides and we need to just move ahead (on) and get on with the peo­ple's busi­ness." In re­sponse to ques­tions on whether the ac­tion by the Gov­ern­ment to pro­tect the site may have come too late, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that was not the func­tion of the Gov­ern­ment to have done dif­fer­ent­ly. "The ad­vice be­ing fol­lowed may not have been the best course in all the cir­cum­stances," she said. "That has been rec­ti­fied and we trust that sit­u­a­tion will not con­tin­ue."