Clevon Raphael

The op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment is in resur­gence mood and will re­tain the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly in the Jan­u­ary 21 elec­tions in the sis­ter is­land. So claims Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds, who says that af­ter this vic­to­ry, the par­ty will move on the lo­cal gov­ern­ment polls in Port-of-Spain and will al­so take the gen­er­al elec­tion due in 2015.

Hinds, an at­tor­ney, who de­clines to apol­o­gise for want­i­ng to cut the locks of a young ras­ta boy be­cause he kissed the hand of the Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing the flood­ing in Diego Mar­tin last year, ar­gues that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment is a good gov­ern­ment-good for it­self.

Q: Mr Hinds, I sus­pect this in­ter­view won't be one of my more pleas­ant ones...do you agree?

A: (Star­ing at Raphael with a pok­er face for about six sec­onds be­fore re­spond­ing in a mea­sured tone, sit­ting in one of the of­fices pro­vid­ed for the Op­po­si­tion in the Par­lia­ment, Tues­day af­ter­noon) Well, I am cer­tain con­trari­wise, that it might very well be (break­ing in­to a smile). I am in a very pleas­ant mood. Are you in an un­pleas­ant mood?

Of course not, but I am think­ing about the dis­cus­sion we had last week when I was mak­ing arrange­ments for this in­ter­view to­day.

I am in a peace­ful mood...as in­deed you are (loud laugh­ter).

Sen­a­tor, I took you away from the de­bate on a mo­tion moved by you ask­ing the gov­ern­ment to reaf­firm its com­mit­ment to the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem of gov­er­nance, dur­ing which you claimed the gov­ern­ment was the biggest threat to democ­ra­cy in this coun­try...

Yes. That's one of the things I said.

All things tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, do you re­al­ly be­lieve that al­le­ga­tion, Sen­a­tor Hinds?

Oh yes. Some peo­ple re­gard the events of 1990 to be the most se­ri­ous threat to the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic arrange­ments in T&T, but there are those who feel the whole Clause 34 sce­nario goes up­per than the events of that year. Now our in­ter­na­tion­al im­age has been sul­lied and one of your he­roes, Queen's Coun­sel Karl Hud­son-Phillips, he, from your NAR days...

Why do you say he was one of my he­roes?

Oh, I gath­er that be­cause you were a mem­ber of the NAR, weren't you?

I was a mem­ber of the NAR?

Or the ONR...which was it, or do you want to de­ny your af­fil­i­a­tion to the ONR/NAR? If I am wrong, cor­rect me.

Is that a crime?

No. No. That's why I say one of your he­roes, Mr Karl Hud­son-Philips, who is al­so one of my he­roes in the law, and as a man of great ex­pres­sions and prin­ci­ples, has said while he can­not be cer­tain, be­cause all the facts are not known, but all of the em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence seems to sug­gest there was some kind of con­spir­a­cy on the part of the Gov­ern­ment...

Con­spir­a­cy with whom, Sen­a­tor, and didn't both hous­es of Par­lia­ment par­tic­i­pate in this whole thing?

The Par­lia­ment did not se­cure one clause and pro­claim it in the dead of night, and in fact Par­lia­ment got an agree­ment from the Gov­ern­ment that it would not pro­claim or do any­thing with the leg­is­la­tion un­til cer­tain things were done.

Sen­a­tor Hinds, if two per­sons who the Gov­ern­ment's de­trac­tors al­lege the move was de­signed to ben­e­fit, if they were not in the equa­tion, do you think there would be this hul­la­baloo over what I think is-you may say I am wrong-now a storm in a teacup?

Well, that is un­sur­pris­ing­ly your view.

Why are you not sur­prised?

Well (hands on knees and rock­ing them left to right), I have been read­ing your columns from time to time and I get the dis­tinct im­pres­sion that at min­i­mum you are sym­pa­thet­ic to the PP gov­ern­ment.

Again I must ask, is that a crime?

Not at all.

So why some in the PNM and its sur­ro­gates or min­ions in the news me­dia at­tempt to make it ap­pear that it is a crime to ex­press views con­trary to that of your par­ty?

Well, not as so­phis­ti­cat­ed (a tinge of sar­casm) as you. All I know, it is not a crime. In fact, when I spoke on the Con­sti­tu­tion to­day, I high­light­ed the free­dom to join a po­lit­i­cal par­ty of your choice, the free­dom to wor­ship...

Has the PP done any­thing to vi­o­late those prin­ci­ples?

Clause 34 is anath­e­ma to the rule of law and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples.

Does Clause 34 pre­vent peo­ple from join­ing a par­ty of their choice?

Oh no. I was talk­ing about ac­tions on the part of the PP gov­ern­ment.

Does Clause 34 pre­vent any­one from get­ting on the me­dia, par­tic­u­lar­ly the elec­tron­ic arm, and cussing the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion, from the Prime Min­is­ter com­ing straight down?

No. I nev­er said that. I nev­er said that.

OK. But in your de­bate a short while ago you said that free­dom of the press was un­der threat from the PP regime.

In my con­tri­bu­tion to­day I point­ed out a num­ber of things in re­spect of the way this gov­ern­ment has dealt with the press. I mean for good or bad the fact shows they raid­ed News­day, they raid­ed the Ex­press.

Who they?

(Stroking his chin) The ad­min­is­tra­tion. The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led ad­min­is­tra­tion, and weren't the po­lice con­duct­ing cer­tain in­ves­ti­ga­tions? That was done by the po­lice but you know I al­so raised...

Are you sug­gest­ing the Gov­ern­ment is con­trol­ling the po­lice ser­vice?

I would hate to think that but what I do know...

Sen­a­tor Hinds...(re­fus­ing to give way)

Just a mo­ment...what I do know is that in 2011 there was de­clared a state of pub­lic emer­gency and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Prime Min­is­ter and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al-they led the charge, and to my mind, en­cour­aged the po­lice to ar­rest...

Mr Hinds...you just said? (Re­fus­ing to give way again)

...over 400 per­sons un­der the an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion and then the Gov­ern­ment-paid se­nior coun­sel to as­sist in putting the ev­i­dence to­geth­er.

As an at­tor­ney your­self, won't you say this was done to en­sure that in­no­cent peo­ple were not charged?

You know, Mr Raphael, I once ap­peared in the Court of Ap­peal and af­ter I made long sub­mis­sion, I thought I was do­ing quite well. In re­ject­ing the ap­peal and let­ting the mur­der con­vic­tion stand, Jus­tice de la Bastide, in com­pli­ment­ing my ad­vo­ca­cy, said with great wit that the qual­i­ty of ad­vo­ca­cy de­served a bet­ter day.

What's the point?

The point I am mak­ing is that I ar­gued to­day that the Gov­ern­ment was en­cour­ag­ing the con­duct that we saw at that time.

Get­ting back to your mo­tion. You said that Gov­ern­ment en­ticed cer­tain jour­nal­ists to join the ad­min­is­tra­tion and men­tioned names like Andy John­son, Fran­cis Joseph and yours tru­ly.

Well, yes...

I want to take of­fence to the state­ment.

You did? But you were one of those who went on a con­tract with a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter...

Yes.

I mean you are a hard­work­ing jour­nal­ist, and I want to make it clear that this is not to un­der­mine the qual­i­ty of the jour­nal­ists.

But isn't it ex­act­ly what you were try­ing to do?

You could say that if you wish, but I am say­ing the bot­tom line is that you and the many oth­er jour­nal­ists ac­cept­ed con­tracts from the Gov­ern­ment and gave up your in­de­pen­dent jour­nal­ist sta­tus to be ef­fec­tive­ly a spokesper­son, a writer and a pro­pa­gan­dist for the Gov­ern­ment.

May I strong­ly ob­ject to that pro­pa­gan­dist la­bel? I nev­er wrote one sto­ry for the news­pa­per when I was with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al as his po­lit­i­cal ad­vis­er, and the PP was not the first gov­ern­ment to hire work­ing jour­nal­ists. The PNM did that and I saw noth­ing wrong with that.

Yes (with a straight face), pro­pa­gan­dist, and that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad word, you know.

Sen­a­tor Hinds, I strong­ly dis­agree with you when you claim that free­dom of the press is un­der threat by this gov­ern­ment and I am speak­ing now as a prac­ti­tion­er of the Fourth Es­tate for the past 49 years.

Did you, Mr Raphael, did you hear the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty the oth­er day telling this coun­try that he knows where a cer­tain woman jour­nal­ist lives...you feel that was prop­er? And wasn't that in­tim­ida­to­ry?

He might have spo­ken out of turn, and I have writ­ten that some of them do.

A lit­tle too of­ten, Mr Raphael? Look at me in my eyes and an­swer the ques­tion. All right, you are not an­swer­ing, so let's talk about the PNM, which is grow­ing in stature, so much so that we are now able to col­lab­o­rate with oth­er peo­ple on is­sues that great­ly af­fect the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Where do you get this im­pres­sion that some­how the PNM is in resur­gence mode, and isn't this wish­ful think­ing?

(Pas­sion­ate­ly speak­ing) Clevon, be­cause I can feel the PNM pow­er, PNM's strength, I can feel it grow­ing. We are now out of port, cross the Bo­cas and we are head­ing to the next port of vic­to­ry, To­ba­go. When we fin­ish with that we head­ing to the oth­er port, which is Port-of-Spain, for the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion... and we will win To­ba­go con­vinc­ing­ly.

How much are you will­ing to bet on that?

I am not a gam­bling man.

Sen­a­tor Hinds, you said that PNM is on the re­bound...?

(An­i­mat­ed­ly with hands out­stretched) Resur­gence, re­new­al, ready for bat­tle again.

Sen­a­tor Hinds, I can­not end this dis­cus­sion with­out ask­ing this a ques­tion: are you ready to apol­o­gise for your re­ac­tion to the young­ster who kissed the Prime Min­is­ter's hand; you called him an id­iot and wished you could have cut off his ras­ta locks?

Mr Raphael, did you hear what I said that day? I said the la­dy was han­dling shov­els and pick­ax­es, it was flood­ing that day, she had on tall boots and I thought it was very un­hy­gien­ic of him to kiss her hands in those cir­cum­stances.

Did you have to threat­en vir­tu­al vi­o­lence?

No. I nev­er did that.

Isn't cut­ting off some­one's hair with­out per­mis­sion a sort of vi­o­lence, Mr Hinds?

Some­body cut your locks, I have my locks. Some­body, when last you went to the bar­ber, some­body was vi­o­lent up­on you.

I am speak­ing of psy­cho­log­i­cal vi­o­lence not phys­i­cal vi­o­lence.

Well, don't use the word, Mr Raphael. In con­clu­sion, Clevon, I would like to say that I am sure that you, as a cit­i­zen of this coun­try, I am sure you must be very dis­ap­point­ed with the way things have gone over the last two years along with the hun­dreds of thou­sands who placed their con­fi­dence in this new gov­ern­ment. For my part I am not dis­ap­point­ed. A tiger does not change its spots (sic).

This gov­ern­ment does not know what it is do­ing, and this gov­ern­ment, most of all, is a good gov­ern­ment-good for it­self.