Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says the controversial-Vincent Nelson indemnity matter was never discussed by his Cabinet.
Speaking at a People’s National Movement meeting on Tuesday night, Dr Rowley made the comment as he addressed questions put to him in a recent newspaper editorial.
“I don’t know why they keep wasting their time. I could tell you without fear of contradiction, nothing to do with that matter has ever come before the Cabinet of Trinidad and Tobago and that is normal because the Cabinet does not get involved in matters of that nature in the Judiciary,” Rowley said.
As he criticised Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar for leading a group in which several members were the subject of police investigations, Rowley said his Government operates differently.
“In a PNM government, the Government does not advise the Attorney General on law, the Attorney General advises the Cabinet on law,” he said.
He accused the United National Congress (UNC) of trying to distract the Government from pursuing white-collar criminals.
But he said that will not happen.
“We believe that the murders and the murderers are a part of the criminal assignment and would get the full attention of the State, but we also believe that those who have committed white collar crime must also face the full brunt of the State,” Rowley said.
He said in the discussions over the Nelson matter, in which charges were brought against former UNC attorney general Anand Ramlogan and former senator Gerald Ramdeen and then dropped several weeks ago, the Opposition has been “talking out of the side of their mouths.”
“You see them spending time up and down, the last three weeks you would have heard them, up and down, you would have thought the Government going to collapse and the country going to collapse because a case collapse in the courthouse,” he said.
But he questioned why no one was asking questions about the allegations that “remain unchallenged.”
