Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to es­tab­lish an in­de­pen­dent in­quiry in­to an al­leged plot to kill her. He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Brigadier John Sandy's han­dling of the state of emer­gency and al­leged plot as "the worst pub­lic mis­con­duct" in T&T. "This is the ba­sis on which we are say­ing that the be­hav­iour of the of­fi­cers in­volved in this re­quires the at­ten­tion of in­ves­tiga­tive in­sti­tu­tions," he added. He said any in­quiry had to be au­tho­rised by the Cab­i­net but Per­sad-Bisses­sar was the head of the Cab­i­net.

He then called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar "to ap­point an in­de­pen­dent in­quir­er in­to this mat­ter of the as­sas­si­na­tion plot and the role of the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, viz-a-viz, her (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) state­ment of No­vem­ber 24. "Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed the al­leged plot to kill her, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma." Row­ley al­so said a No­vem­ber 23 po­lice eval­u­a­tion doc­u­ment, which con­demned the al­leged plot, was to be sent to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to de­ter­mine its au­then­tic­i­ty. Row­ley not­ed that Pres­i­dent Richards was the Com­man­der-in-Chief of the De­fence Force. He raised ques­tions about any role of Pres­i­dent Richards in the mat­ter.

He asked:

• Was the Pres­i­dent in­formed about this plot?

• Was he part of or in­volved in the call­ing up of army re­serves in re­sponse to a non-ex­ist­ing plot? and

• What was the role of the Pres­i­dent in this?

Row­ley said his spe­cif­ic al­le­ga­tions against the high-rank­ing Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials "re­quire an in­volve­ment of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to see whether those of­fi­cials act­ed with­in the eth­i­cal code of the let­ter and spir­it of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act." He said af­ter 18 months in of­fice the Gov­ern­ment had "crossed the line this time and it re­quires a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion by what­ev­er au­thor­i­ty we have."

Row­ley al­so told yes­ter­day's news con­fer­ence at his Charles Street of­fice, Port-of-Spain, that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Brigadier John Sandy should re­sign from the Cab­i­net be­cause of the dis­mal fail­ure of the state of emer­gency, which ex­pired on Mon­day. Row­ley said the de­sired ob­jec­tives of the emer­gency were not met.

The eval­u­a­tion said in part: • The chrono­log­i­cal se­quence of events is in­con­sis­tent. when ra­tio­nalised to the al­leged plot, it ei­ther rais­es the ques­tion of the ex­pe­ri­ence of the au­thor in in­ter­view­ing, brief­ing or de­brief­ing, or the source ac­cess. In the lat­ter case if the source does not have di­rect ac­cess it is quite pos­si­ble that he may be spec­u­lat­ing as to what he is see­ing in an at­tempt to make sense of it. There­fore, it is the du­ty of the au­thor to es­tab­lish this while not dis­miss­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the claim.

In­stances when this is most ev­i­dent are: • The stat­ed pur­pose of the as­sas­si­na­tion be­ing to show the Gov­ern­ment that the state of emer­gency called on Au­gust 21, 2011, was a dis­mal fail­ure. If this be true, then it can be in­ferred that they had pri­or knowl­edge that the Prime Min­is­ter would have called a state of emer­gency pri­or to Au­gust 21, 2011 and it would have failed, so they im­port­ed arms and am­mu­ni­tion in Jan­u­ary 2011.Row­ley said Pres­i­dent Richards and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion "can use their good of­fices to de­ter­mine whether this doc­u­ment forms part of the of­fi­cial work of our ser­vices."