Bas condemns police raid

An atrocious act! That’s how former prime minister Basdeo Panday described the police raid on Newsday’s Port-of-Spain office on Thursday. He expressed this view during a press conference at The Basdeo Panday Foundation Office at Rienzi Complex, Couva, yesterday. Panday also sought to clear the air on his turbulent past with the media. “Let me tell you now once and for all that the only problem I had with the media was that they were not entitled to publish lies, half truths and innuendoes,” he said.

Panday said during his tenure as prime minister he refused to sign the Treaty of Chapultepec because he “wanted them to include in that that the media had no right to publish lies, half truths, and innuendoes and when they did not I refuse to sign that was my fight with them.” Panday pointed out that T&T’s Constitution contains provisions that the media should be free. “So therefore not only is the government entitled to comment on the media, the media is entitled to comment on the government. That’s alright.

“But when you terrorise them by raiding their offices, by attacking their journalists and rushing up to their office—after having a haircut—into the studio, that is unacceptable. I think is totally unacceptable that the government should raid the office. “They must use other means. To raid the offices of the journalist and the media...this is an atrocious act and it is an indication that this government intends to rule by fear.” Police raided the daily newspaper’s offices and seized a computer hard drive from senior journalist Andre Bagoo in an attempt to find out his source for an article about the Integrity Commission published last December. They also seized laptops from Bagoo’s Belmont home.