JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Minister: Brown playing politics

by

20140723

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day re­tired Brig Gen Ralph Brown had a po­lit­i­cal agen­da when he came out and de­scribed sol­dier pa­trols in Laven­tille as il­le­gal.Grif­fith was re­spond­ing to crit­i­cism of him on Tues­day by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor He­len Dray­ton, who de­fend­ed Brown's state­ment. He was speak­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at his min­istry, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain.Dray­ton had said that Grif­fith was "out of place" and "out of sync" to at­tack Brown, who com­ment­ed in a let­ter to the ed­i­tor on Sun­day.

She said the al­leged abuse of civil­ians by sol­diers could un­der­mine the process of jus­tice.But Grif­fith said: "If Gen­er­al Brown was re­al­ly worth his salt, what he would have done is to con­tact Ma­jor Gen Ken­rick Ma­haraj, as oth­er peo­ple will do. That was a de­lib­er­ate po­lit­i­cal agen­da and I have a prob­lem with that."What Ma­jor Gen­er­al Brown did was wrong. It was in­ap­pro­pri­ate and it was bla­tant dis­re­spect to the De­fence Force and my job is to pro­tect them at all costs and to en­sure they go out there and do their job."

Grif­fith ex­pressed his dis­ap­point­ment with Brown's state­ments es­pe­cial­ly giv­en his ex­per­tise.The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter said he was con­cerned by the fact that there was a de­lib­er­ate ac­cu­sa­tion that sol­diers were op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly.He added: "And your way of try­ing to deal with a sit­u­a­tion is to take all of them and tell them to go back to bar­racks.

"That I think is dis­re­spect to the De­fence Force... you are ques­tion­ing their pro­fes­sion­al­ism, their per­for­mance and that is my con­cern. My point is, do not point fin­gers and ac­cuse the De­fence Force of op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly,"He said if there were con­cerns that in­for­ma­tion should be tak­en to the po­lice.Ma­haraj, who was al­so at the press con­fer­ence, de­scribed Brown as a "re­spect­ed pre­de­ces­sor" and said since his de­par­ture from the De­fence Force in 1995 the en­vi­ron­ment has changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Brown said he had no fur­ther com­ment.Grif­fith al­so crit­i­cised Dray­ton, say­ing she had a prob­lem with every sin­gle de­ci­sion made by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

What Brown said

Brown, in his let­ter to the ed­i­tor, la­belled pa­trols by sol­diers in Laven­tille as il­le­gal.He called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, to bring a halt to the pa­trols "and thrash out this mat­ter once and for all" with act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams and Chief of De­fence Staff Ma­jor Gen Ken­rick Ma­haraj over who ex­act­ly or­dered the pa­trols.

Brown wrote: "The act­ing com­mis­sion­er has or­dered his of­fi­cers to ar­rest and charge any sol­dier found com­mit­ting an of­fence, this in re­sponse to ques­tions posed to him by jour­nal­ists about the le­gal­i­ty of sol­diers pa­trolling Laven­tille with­out po­lice­men in at­ten­dance."The act­ing com­mis­sion­er went fur­ther to state that nei­ther he nor the Chief of De­fence Staff has or­dered the pa­trols which are be­ing un­der­tak­en by the sol­diers.

"If the sol­diers are in fact pa­trolling, it would be in­ter­est­ing to know who or­dered the pa­trols."It fol­lows that if the act­ing com­mis­sion­er did not re­quest the pa­trols and the Chief of De­fence Staff did not or­der them, then the pa­trols are in fact il­le­gal un­der the law, and as the act­ing com­mis­sion­er has stat­ed, they should be ar­rest­ed."This is a recipe for chaos and/or con­fronta­tion be­tween po­lice and sol­diers, some­thing we have worked hard over the years at 'ar­rest­ing.'"


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored