Richard Ra­moutar

Hav­ing writ­ten ex­ten­sive­ly on all as­pects of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty for the past five years, my view is that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) Gov­ern­ment ap­pears very much chal­lenged by the man­ner in which it han­dles na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty-this, es­pe­cial­ly as it per­tains to the na­tion's do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­ests. Al­ready bereft of a vi­sion­ary na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy doc­u­ment, the PP Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to en­counter grave dif­fi­cul­ty in pre­sent­ing a co­he­sive ap­proach from those who speak on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters. There al­so ex­ists these neb­u­lous con­structs of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty lan­guage which does not en­hance the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment. This brings to the fore the ques­tion as to whether or not the PM is ad­e­quate­ly ad­vised on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters, giv­en her ap­par­ent lim­it­ed ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge of this field.

From a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty per­spec­tive, there should not ex­ist in the pub­lic minds Hou­di­ni's po­lit­i­cal mas­ter­piece-"im­me­di­ate threats to­day, gone to­mor­row" (mas­sive cri­sis to­day, avert­ed to­mor­row, as­sas­si­na­tion plot to be car­ried on No­vem­ber 24, thwart­ed weeks be­fore). This turn of events can cre­ate the pub­lic per­cep­tion that we are slow­ly be­ing led down the precipice of dan­ger­ous democ­ra­cy. In the process, rule of law, jus­tice and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights are be­ing slow­ly di­min­ished. That is al­so part of the chal­lenge fac­ing the PP Gov­ern­ment. Even though this col­umn has writ­ten about the in­her­ent dan­gers of grant­i­ng the mil­i­tary po­lice pow­ers, our Gov­ern­ment does not ap­pear to lis­ten. How­ev­er, a good re­minder came from Dr Pa­tri­cia Chavez, for­mer mil­i­tary ad­vis­er to the Pen­ta­gon. Dr Chavez was speak­ing at the re­cent­ly held UWI Con­fer­ence on Crime and Drugs.

The lat­est rev­e­la­tions of an un­earthed plot link­ing "the lan­guage of ter­ror­ism af­ter 9/11, high alert, a fun­da­men­tal­ist Mus­lim group, weapons ex­plo­sives" by the se­cu­ri­ty forces to "as­sas­si­nate the Ho­n­ourable PM and three of her Cab­i­net col­leagues" has been met with a de­gree of pub­lic skep­ti­cism and fur­ther ques­tion­ing of the Gov­ern­ment's cred­i­bil­i­ty. Can any­one imag­ine such a se­ri­ous threat on the lives of the na­tion's lead­ers and the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty does not say any­thing at the press con­fer­ence un­til three days lat­er, when he sends a text to the Ex­press? Yet, the Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­vis­er to the PM, high­ly ac­claimed by the UK press as one of the ar­chi­tects of the SoE, may have com­pound­ed the po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion by mak­ing dis­con­cert­ing com­ments on al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in the ju­di­cia­ry. Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs was per­haps less than con­vinc­ing in his com­ments on the threat. But ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Sandy and Brigadier Ma­haraj, the "threat was re­al."

Ex­am­ine An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act (2005) care­ful­ly

If the Ho­n­ourable PM and three of her Min­is­ters were to be as­sas­si­nat­ed on the 24/11/2011, would it not have been pru­dent with that lev­el of avail­able in­tel­li­gence to have se­cured the PM, Cab­i­net col­leagues and all staff, but al­low the al­leged per­pe­tra­tors to "put in place their so called "weapons and ex­plo­sives" for any in­tend­ed ac­tion? In that way, with all the so­phis­ti­cat­ed mon­i­tor­ing and sur­veil­lance mech­a­nisms avail­able to the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, they would have been able to per­haps con­struct with re­li­able ev­i­dence, the mak­ings of a pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al case. How­ev­er, did the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies act pre­ma­ture­ly?

In con­sid­er­ing the use of the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act (2005) and its amend­ments, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go should care­ful­ly scru­ti­nise and ex­am­ine the spir­it, in­tent, lan­guage and de­f­i­n­i­tion of the term "ter­ror­ist act" and its im­pli­ca­tions. En­act­ed against the back­ground of the ter­ror­ist acts of 9/11 on Amer­i­can soil, and the UN­SCR 1373, all na­tions were man­dat­ed to en­act an­ti-ter­ror­ism leg­is­la­tions to counter the threat of glob­al ter­ror­ism in its myr­i­ad forms. Al­ready sad­dled by com­plex chal­lenges and ques­tion­able le­gal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to sat­is­fy the thresh­old cri­te­ria for pro­claim­ing a state of emer­gency (SoE) un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law, re­gion­al hu­man rights bod­ies and the con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the PP Gov­ern­ment must en­sure that this lat­est "plot to as­sas­si­nate," "threats to desta­bilise," "threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty," does not trans­form na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty law in­to an ef­fec­tive po­lit­i­cal in­stru­ment.

De­spite the ATA (2005) seem­ing im­por­tance in the fight against ter­ror­ism, the ab­sence of ex­plic­it de­f­i­n­i­tions of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threats, ei­ther in the Act it­self or in ac­com­pa­ny­ing leg­is­la­tion can ren­der the ATA sus­cep­ti­ble to po­lit­i­cal mis­use.

Im­mi­gra­tion ques­tions, the plot

The oth­er mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­est that con­tin­ues to mys­ti­fy the na­tion sur­rounds the al­le­ga­tions of two for­eign na­tion­als with false pass­ports, their present where­abouts, and why were they housed at the air­port ho­tel by CAL for so long? Why they were not housed at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre (IDC)? Were they in any way con­nect­ed to the threat on the PM's life? Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty John Sandy al­so ap­pears not to know what is hap­pen­ing with the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment, as well as his Ju­nior Min­is­ter, Col­in Par­tap.

What were the re­al rea­sons for the re­cent de­nials of en­try by a group of Pak­ista­nis? Has there been a re­view of the role, pol­i­cy func­tions and re­struc­tur­ing of the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment as it re­lates to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, in­tel­li­gence, bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and hu­man rights. French philoso­pher Alex­is de Toc­queville said: "The ef­fec­tive rea­son that caus­es men to lose po­lit­i­cal pow­er is that they have be­come un­wor­thy to re­tain it." An­oth­er rea­son, said Toc­queville, "was that the then gov­ern­ing class had be­come through its in­dif­fer­ence, its self­ish­ness, and its vices in­ca­pable and un­wor­thy of gov­ern­ing the coun­try". Is the PP head­ing in that di­rec­tion with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty? If ever there was a time that this na­tion must come to­geth­er and col­lec­tive­ly de­mand changes in trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty from the PP led Gov­ern­ment, it is now.