Gail Alexan­der

The state of emer­gency would still have been suc­cess­ful even if the 16 per­sons de­tained in con­nec­tion with a re­port­ed "death threat" against the Prime Min­ster and three Cab­i­net Min­is­ters, were re­leased, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said yes­ter­day.Speak­ing to re­porters fol­low­ing a ser­vice at Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral in Port-of-Spain, Ram­lo­gan al­so threw cold wa­ter on an "eval­u­a­tion" re­port which Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley had spo­ken about con­cern­ing the re­port­ed death threat.

Ram­lo­gan spoke af­ter a ser­vice mark­ing the 50th an­niver­sary of bi-cam­er­al­ism of the Par­lia­ment.A heavy se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence was in force for the func­tion, which was at­tend­ed by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, House Speak­er Wade Mark and Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith, mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty chiefs.

Ram­lo­gan said: "If Ju­ly 1990 was avert­ed by pre-emp­tive ac­tion by the Gov­ern­ment I would re­gard that as suc­cess, and like­wise I re­gard this (SoE) as a suc­cess."He said Gov­ern­ment would con­tin­ue to trust in law en­force­ment al­though there was al­ways room for im­prove­ment.On the "eval­u­a­tion" re­port which Row­ley dis­played last Fri­day and which dis­missed the re­port­ed death plot, Ram­lo­gan said that re­port did not come to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and was not dis­cussed by the coun­cil.

Say­ing Gov­ern­ment did not have a copy of that re­port, Ram­lo­gan added: "If we get a copy, we will be hap­py to pass it to the rel­e­vant agency where it was sup­posed to have em­anat­ed from and ask them if it is au­then­tic. But we can't as­cer­tain the ve­rac­i­ty of the bona fides of that re­port."Ram­lo­gan said the coun­cil had, how­ev­er, re­ceived an eval­u­a­tion re­port and had gone ahead with the ad­vice and rec­om­men­da­tions by law en­force­ment agen­cies on that re­port.

Ram­lo­gan said Row­ley could not be viewed as a Prime Min­is­ter-in-wait­ing since he did not share the re­port which he (Row­ley) had ob­tained with the Prime Min­is­ter. He said the PM, how­ev­er, had tak­en Row­ley in­to her con­fi­dence and had asked po­lice to share "sen­si­tive na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­for­ma­tion" with Row­ley.