Richard Ra­moutar

Against the back­ground of all those in­tel­li­gence en­ti­ties, the pub­lic must there­fore ask the burn­ing ques­tion: What ef­fec­tive, mean­ing­ful and pro­duc­tive in­for­ma­tion from these en­ti­ties have yield­ed re­sults in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem? This is the core re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and car­di­nal func­tions of these or­gans of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Hope­ful­ly, there may not be ex­ist­ing par­al­lels like what has oc­curred un­der the Lynn Williams led IM­PACS, the re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­tel­li­gence en­ti­ty. Too of­ten, one can find de­ci­sions made at the high­est lev­el that are ini­tial­ly ques­tion­able, ac­count­able, lack of trans­paren­cy, ero­sion of con­fi­dence and spas­mod­ic rev­e­la­tions of fraud­u­lent trans­ac­tions. What are the lead­ing man­darins of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty do­ing with tax­pay­ers' mon­ey? How much of these pub­lic ex­pen­di­tures are re­al­ly geared to­wards the gen­uine safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go?

The lat­est saga in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters now in­volves Cana­di­ans Dwayne Gibbs and his deputy, Jack Ewart­s­ki, along with an Amer­i­can Dan Con­don, an­oth­er lo­cal sol­dier, along with Dirk Barnes, for­mer TT Army Ma­jor and now man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the re­cent­ly formed T&T Air Sup­port Com­pa­ny, and a for­mer but now dis­en­chant­ed part­ner, Ed­die Dalls­ingh, of Navi-Comm Avion­ics. De­spite pos­sess­ing ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty to pur­chase a crime fight­ing ap­pa­ra­tus be­low a mil­lion in the fight against crime, Gibbs must know that he is ac­count­able by virtue of pro­fes­sion­al ethics and in­tegri­ty to the Head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty line min­is­ter, the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the min­istry, and by ex­ten­sion tax­pay­ers. What ap­pears to be very ques­tion­able and per­haps flawed at this stage is the modus operan­di in­volv­ing the tri­al con­tract? There al­so ap­pears to be ex­treme­ly favourable con­sid­er­a­tion in award­ing of the tri­al con­tract in the ab­sence of a quan­tum of oth­er ap­pli­cants and a prop­er pro­cure­ment process. But this tem­po­rary con­trac­tu­al award is not some­thing un­com­mon with this PP ad­min­is­tra­tion.

What is fur­ther dis­turb­ing is that there ap­pears to be lim­it­ed sur­veil­lance ex­pe­ri­ence on the part of the sol­diers. That Dan Con­don, a US na­tion­al flew the air­craft is not the is­sue in ques­tion. It is how and why the pro­ce­dures adopt­ed ap­pears tilt­ed in favour of the T&T Air Sup­port Com­pa­ny? Com­pound­ing the mat­ter is the fact that ac­cord­ing to news­pa­per re­ports, the ho­n­ourable PM stat­ed that "nei­ther her Cab­i­net nor the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil ever au­tho­rised Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs to lease a sur­veil­lance air­craft as part of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ar­se­nal". Min­is­ter Sandy said that he was "dis­ap­point­ed in not be­ing in­formed," and that "Gibbs was ill-ad­vised". Then how is that pos­si­ble with­in the realm of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty strate­gic think­ing? Then I ques­tion: Where is the in­tel­li­gence of these avatars and ad­vis­ers in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty? Where is the Ju­nior Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Col­in Par­tap? Are we to be­lieve that all of this is oc­cur­ring un­der the very eyes of what is sup­posed to be a trust­wor­thy gov­ern­ment?

Where mon­ey, loy­al­ty find a com­mon bond

Gibbs is no doubt chal­lenged by com­plex polic­ing, cul­ture, so­ci­etal at­ti­tudes, po­lit­i­cal and elit­ist in­volve­ment, al­le­ga­tions of po­lice cor­rup­tion in­volv­ing both se­nior, mid­dle man­age­ment and ju­nior of­fi­cers. Hav­ing re­tired from the Ed­mon­ton Po­lice Ser­vice as a Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice, not a chief of po­lice, Gibbs lat­er joins the Trans­porta­tion De­part­ment of Al­ber­ta for a very short while and then ven­tures on his own. That would con­vey the im­pres­sion that he may not have been in­ter­est­ed in ac­tive polic­ing any­more. This col­umn is not cer­tain of Gibbs' track record in suc­cess­ful­ly tack­ling transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crimes and cor­rup­tion in Al­ber­ta, and which has found a very fer­tile mar­ket in this so­ci­ety. The en­su­ing de­bat­able ques­tion is whether or not af­ter 20 or more months Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs is men­tal­ly, in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly and in­de­pen­dent­ly equipped to deal with the so called trans­for­ma­tion of the Po­lice ser­vice and the scourge of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime. Gibbs has ac­quired a rather unique po­si­tion since the colo­nial era, in that of a for­eign­er un­der a work con­tract.

A rather dis­turb­ing no­tion is whether or not the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go may have care­ful­ly con­sid­ered the pos­si­ble ad­verse im­pli­ca­tions of such a de­ci­sion. This col­umn sug­gests that this is a rare oc­ca­sion that a non-res­i­dent, or cit­i­zen, on a work con­tract is hired not as an ad­vis­er but Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. This was done in spite of the fact that there are lo­cals who have at­tained a high­er lev­el than that of a Su­per­in­ten­dent, and with more ex­pe­ri­ence and qual­i­fi­ca­tions? Fur­ther­more, the ex­ec­u­tive saw it fit that a for­eign­er who can be de­void of loy­al­ty to this coun­try or its con­sti­tu­tion can sit on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil brief­in­gs, be privy to Gov­ern­ment se­crets and a host of oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters. Would Cana­da, the UK, USA, Swe­den, Aus­tralia, New Zealand hire a for­eign Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and al­low him or her such priv­i­leged ac­cess to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters?

An im­por­tant fac­tor un­der­ly­ing Gibbs' ac­cep­tance of the job is the ex­treme­ly hand­some salary (over $100, 000 per month) paid to Gibbs per­haps as a man­age­ment ap­pren­tice on the job as com­pared to the measly earn­ings paid to cur­rent of­fi­cers? How can he ex­pect to trans­form the Po­lice Ser­vice when his cred­i­bil­i­ty may have come in­to ques­tion over this light sur­veil­lance air­craft, his non­sen­si­cal re­sponse to the ar­rests and even­tu­al re­lease of over 400 de­tainees dur­ing the ill-ad­vised state of emer­gency (SoE), and worst of all, a "re­al threat" or plot on the life of the PM?