No Con­fi­dence 2013-05-20

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said that Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley made a "bold-faced, dis­grace­ful, shame­ful at­tempt to as­sas­si­nate the char­ac­ter of PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar" when he pre­sent­ed a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence against the PM and the Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day. Ram­lo­gan was the first Min­is­ter to re­spond to Row­ley's mo­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives."It is pure and ut­ter fab­ri­ca­tion," Ram­lo­gan said the al­le­ga­tion of email ex­changes be­tween cer­tain high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

Ram­lo­gan said he nev­er had any gmail ac­count with the ad­dress Row­ley re­ferred to in his con­tri­bu­tion. He al­so dis­missed Row­ley's claim that he want­ed to tap the phone of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).He al­so said the Of­fice of the AG had no in­ter­est in tap­ping the phones of jour­nal­ists ei­ther, as was claimed by Row­ley, adding that was the way the PNM op­er­at­ed while in gov­ern­ment.

The AG said Row­ley's mo­tion was "en­tire­ly mis­con­ceived, to­tal­ly de­void of mer­it, com­plete­ly un­jus­ti­fied, and an abuse of Par­lia­ment."He in­sist­ed the Gov­ern­ment had not done any­thing to un­der­mine the Ju­di­cia­ry or the me­dia in the coun­try, as was claimed by Row­ley.Not­ing Row­ley's mo­tion was "ridicu­lous in the ex­treme", Ram­lo­gan said he did not have an email with the ad­dress anan@gmail.com. He said his email ad­dress was anand@tstt.net.tt.Ram­lo­gan said Row­ley was mak­ing "base­less al­le­ga­tions" and "grasp­ing at straws", adding there was a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Ju­di­cia­ry. He said the mo­tion should be treat­ed with the great­est of con­tempt for it was vac­u­ous and with­out mer­it.In a re­lease last evening, the Of­fice of the PM re­fut­ed any au­thor­ship in the se­ries of print­outs of al­leged elec­tron­ic mails be­tween mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment dur­ing a pe­ri­od of Sep­tem­ber 2012 pro­duced by Row­ley.

"The con­tent of the print-outs as read in­to the Par­lia­men­tary de­bate this af­ter­noon would be in­ad­mis­si­ble un­der any gen­er­al rule of ev­i­dence and we chal­lenge the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion to au­then­ti­cate these mes­sages."We al­so chal­lenge the Op­po­si­tion Leader to re­peat these al­le­ga­tions out­side the Par­lia­ment cham­ber and with­out the pro­tec­tion of the priv­i­lege he so skill­ful­ly abus­es," the re­lease said.It added that "in this era of tech­nol­o­gy, it is easy to forge e-mail ac­counts, or to cre­ate ac­counts that are ei­ther very sim­i­lar or ap­pears to be an au­then­tic ex­ist­ing email"."If a se­ries of print outs, with­out any well-es­tab­lished elec­tron­ic ver­i­fi­ca­tion process, is the foun­da­tion of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion's No Con­fi­dence Mo­tion in the Gov­ern­ment; then the mo­tion is be­ing built on noth­ing more than a fic­ti­tious and fab­ri­cat­ed pa­per foun­da­tion and adds noth­ing to the de­vel­op­ment of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go," the re­lease said.