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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Ganja video under scrutiny

by

20140528

Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts will go be­fore a com­mit­tee of se­nior mem­bers of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) this morn­ing as in­ves­ti­ga­tions be­gin in­to the con­tro­ver­sial video which shows a per­son re­sem­bling and sound­ing like a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter rolling a mar­i­jua­na cig­a­rette in a ho­tel room with two women.

Par­ty chair­man Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan yes­ter­day con­firmed an an­nounce­ment by par­ty leader Prakash Ra­mad­har that she and deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Anirudh Ma­habir had been man­dat­ed to con­duct an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and make rec­om­men­da­tions to the par­ty.She al­so con­firmed the meet­ing with Roberts is sched­uled for 8.30 am but did not want to give the venue.

She said she ex­pect­ed the meet­ing would al­low Roberts, who has nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied he is the per­son in the video, an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice."We may have a dis­cus­sion with him and find out from the oth­ers what they want to do but to me it is a very straight­for­ward is­sue," Seep­er­sad-Bachan said.

Gen­er­al sec­re­tary Clyde Weath­er­head said on Tues­day that Roberts had in­di­cat­ed his will­ing­ness to meet with par­ty of­fi­cials and re­quest­ed that he (Roberts) be present when they view the video.Speak­ing on CNC3 Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Ra­mad­har said the fact that Roberts was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the par­ty to which he be­longed showed that its doc­trine of ac­count­abil­i­ty was still be­ing up­held.Like Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Ra­mad­har chose to keep a still tongue un­til the mat­ter was thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

"I have to keep that lev­el of pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence in my mind, first and fore­most, but this is pol­i­tics, so when the par­ty makes its find­ings we will act up­on those. I don't want to pre-empt any­thing, to in­flu­ence any­thing one way or the oth­er," Ra­mad­har, who is al­so Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter, said.How­ev­er, he as­sured that if the find­ings of the two in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tra­dict each oth­er, they would deal with that ac­cord­ing­ly but he vowed that no mem­ber of his par­ty would be let off eas­i­ly for mis­con­duct.

He said the COP's prin­ci­ples of ac­count­abil­i­ty would not be cast aside, re­gard­less of who was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed."When­ev­er any­one falls short the COP will say 'we are sor­ry, noth­ing per­son­al, but it is about the fu­ture of this na­tion we must build,'" he added.The fact that the video bears no time or date has al­so fu­elled spec­u­la­tion about its age.How­ev­er, BC Pires, ed­i­tor of the Cre Ole mag­a­zine, an edi­tion of which is seen in the video, has sought to shed some light on the time­line.

In a let­ter to the ed­i­tor yes­ter­day, Pires wrote: "Be­cause the time of film­ing of the al­leged il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties of a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter in a ho­tel room has been ques­tioned, I write to state that the in­ci­dent could not have tak­en place be­fore Jan­u­ary 2012. Un­less there has been some ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly good ma­nip­u­la­tion of the im­ages.

"I am the ed­i­tor of an an­nu­al mag­a­zine, Cre Ole - The Guide to Din­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The 2012 edi­tion was pub­lished in late De­cem­ber of 2011, ef­fec­tive­ly Jan­u­ary 2012. I have looked at the video and can state firm­ly that the mag­a­zine on which the sub­stance in the video footage was pack­aged was the 2012 is­sue of Cre Ole."An­oth­er copy of the same mag­a­zine is al­so in plain view on the video. The mag­a­zine pub­lish­er al­so recog­nis­es the mag­a­zine.

"How­ev­er, use­ful or help­ful it might be to any­one, it is sim­ply un­true to say the events took place be­fore 2012."


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