Gail Alexan­der

The Gov­ern­ment's "hys­ter­i­cal" re­sponse to an al­leged death threat by con­fin­ing all se­cu­ri­ty forces to bar­racks is en­gen­der­ing the at­mos­phere for dis­cord and crime, PNM sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds said yes­ter­day.Hinds was speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on amend­ments to leg­is­la­tion re­gard­ing in­dictable of­fences in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney said the bill, rep­re­sent­ing a par­a­digm change, would "equi­lib­ri­ate" fair­ness and ef­fi­cien­cy in the sys­tem and al­le­vi­ate pit­falls in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice. Changes in­clude shift­ing hear­ings from the mag­is­trates' court to the High Court

Hinds' con­tri­bu­tion on the bill not­ed the Gov­ern­ment's re­ac­tion to the re­cent al­leged death threat to the Prime Min­is­ter and sev­er­al oth­er min­is­ters.Hinds said: "You see the be­hav­iour? Head­lines all over the world: 'Mus­lims! ter­ror­ists!'"We end­ed up with a head­line 'Drug lords' be­hind plot,' while the po­lice are telling us the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is in its in­fan­cy stages and they haven't a clue as to the caus­es and rea­sons."Yet the Prime Min­is­ter al­ready con­clud­ed drug lords were be­hind the plot.

"She said so in a press con­fer­ence when (Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne) Gibbs is the one who told us that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion had now be­gun."The Prime Min­is­ter is ac­cus­ing peo­ple of trea­son...We don't know who made the threat."We know in our ex­pe­ri­ence in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and gov­ern­ment that threats are a nor­mal part of the busi­ness of gov­er­nance in any coun­try."While we have no doubt a threat may have been is­sued, we main­tain that your re­spons­es to it by con­fin­ing all se­cu­ri­ty forces to bar­racks is all hys­te­ria.

"You're trau­ma­tis­ing T&T and en­gen­der­ing an at­mos­phere suit­ed for crime and dis­or­der."Hinds said the Gov­ern­ment's call-out of all se­cu­ri­ty forces dur­ing the is­sue al­so left the courts with­out po­lice­men who had to give ev­i­dence."Bac­cha­nal, hys­te­ria! They shut down the whole coun­try," Hinds added. He said death threats were noth­ing new to the UNC.He said "in the not too dis­tant past" when such a threat was re­ceived and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's SUV ve­hi­cle was in­volved, the po­lice told the Gov­ern­ment that it was not po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.