An­na-Lisa Paul and

Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

In light of the alarm­ing claims by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that an al­leged plot to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment had been un­cov­ered at the na­tion’s high­est se­cu­ri­ty in­tel­li­gence agency–the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA)–two po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists have made a call for trans­paren­cy in the dis­clo­sure made by the PM in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day.

In an ex­clu­sive re­port in the Sun­day Guardian, for­mer di­rec­tor of the SSA Ma­jor Roger Best, who was ter­mi­nat­ed, is dis­tanc­ing him­self from claims by Dr Row­ley that the agency un­der his watch was plot­ting to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment. There has been strong de­nial by Best, who la­belled the claims as “pre­pos­ter­ous” and “lu­di­crous” and said the in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by the PM was “filled with many de­grees of dis­in­for­ma­tion to suit a par­tic­u­lar nar­ra­tive that was based on in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion.” He de­scribed it as a witch-hunt.

Prof Hamid Ghany and Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath, re­spond­ing to the claims made by Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, who is the head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC), dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary sit­ting, both agreed the dis­clo­sures were “deeply dis­turb­ing” and “trea­so­nous” but lacked crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion.
Re­spond­ing to claims that a pos­si­ble plot to over­throw the gov­ern­ment in­volv­ing SSA per­son­nel had been un­cov­ered, Prof Ghany told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, “The state­ment made by Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Wednes­day about a plot to stage a coup to re­move the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-elect­ed Gov­ern­ment is deeply dis­turb­ing as it rais­es the spec­tre of trea­son.”

Re­fer­ring to the de­nial by Best, Prof Ghany said the con­tin­u­ing im­broglio had raised ques­tions as to, “Who is telling the truth?” Dr Ra­goonath, mean­while, said the coun­try had noth­ing else to go on oth­er than what Dr Row­ley had re­vealed.

Prof Ghany said, “Par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege pro­tects the Prime Min­is­ter; how­ev­er, there are av­enues avail­able to pri­vate cit­i­zens to chal­lenge the par­lia­men­tary record on state­ments made in Par­lia­ment that they al­lege are not true in re­la­tion to them.”

Ghany, how­ev­er, ad­vised that “if Ma­jor Best want­ed to avail him­self of this fa­cil­i­ty,” he would have to wait un­til Sep­tem­ber, as Par­lia­ment had gone in­to its man­dat­ed re­cess un­der Stand­ing Or­der 14 of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the first week of Ju­ly to the first week of Sep­tem­ber.

He said, “In the in­ter­im, one would have to see if any charges are laid as a re­sult of the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment.”

Dr Ra­goonath: Where Is The Trans­paren­cy?

Call­ing for an as­sur­ance that the au­thor­i­ties had moved to take ac­tion against those in­volved in the al­leged coup plot, Dr Ra­goonath called for greater trans­paren­cy in the mat­ter con­cern­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

He said, “There is ab­solute­ly no oth­er in­for­ma­tion that we have out­side there, ex­cept for the state­ment the Prime Min­is­ter made in Par­lia­ment. At this point in time, there is no trans­paren­cy as to what has hap­pened.

“If you tell me some­body was plan­ning a coup to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment and no­body was charged, then some­thing is wrong if you have that in­for­ma­tion and you’re not us­ing it.”

In­di­cat­ing he was “hard-pressed” to make a com­ment on whether there was any truth to the mat­ter, Ra­goonath re­it­er­at­ed that in­for­ma­tion was lack­ing. “So whether or not the Prime Min­is­ter knew about where the in­for­ma­tion came from that aroused all the sus­pi­cions and all of these things, all that is on­ly spec­u­la­tion. We don’t know what start­ed it,” he said.

Re­fer­ring to the on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Ra­goonath be­lieved that Dr Row­ley was at­tempt­ing to put two dif­fer­ent is­sues to­geth­er. He said, “One was on the SSA, and the oth­er was on Gary Grif­fith grant­i­ng Firearm User’s Li­cences (FUL). So whether the Prime Min­is­ter is try­ing to make a link there or not, I don’t know, but again, all we have are two state­ments.”

He added that there was a lot of, “He say, she say” about the mat­ter.

Dr Ra­goonath, how­ev­er, agreed cer­tain pro­to­cols had to be fol­lowed if some of the in­for­ma­tion was sen­si­tive and could not be re­vealed due to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“But this last set of in­for­ma­tion about an at­tempt­ed coup,” he said, was “stretch­ing it a bit be­cause there is ab­solute­ly no in­for­ma­tion as to what would have caused that.”

He added, “When I heard about the state­ment on the coup, it re­mind­ed me of when Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in pow­er and there was a sug­ges­tion about a coup at­tempt to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment, and that’s why we had a State of Emer­gency un­der that regime. This time there is no State of Emer­gency but we are hear­ing the same pro­pa­gan­da,” he stat­ed.

On the is­sue of Dr Row­ley us­ing par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege to make the dis­clo­sures while the au­dit was said to be in­com­plete, Ra­goonath said while he was not wrong to do so, he should al­so be able to re­veal what was be­ing done to ad­dress the is­sues iden­ti­fied.

Ra­goonath said par­lia­men­tar­i­ans should not use the um­brel­la of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege to make al­le­ga­tions but rather to in­form the pub­lic of what is hap­pen­ing.

Burn­ing ques­tions to an­swer

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira said the claim of “a coup be­ing plot­ted by em­ploy­ees of the SSA with the ma­te­r­i­al to ef­fect said coup be­ing pur­chased by the lead­er­ship of the SSA, us­ing tax­pay­ers funds, had al­so raised burn­ing ques­tions that must be an­swered.”

He ac­cused Dr Row­ley of act­ing pre­ma­ture­ly in re­veal­ing some of the find­ings of the on­go­ing au­dit in­to the op­er­a­tions of the SSA, es­pe­cial­ly un­der the cloak of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege.

Figueira said the PM has some burn­ing ques­tions to an­swer. Re­gard­ing the claims of an al­leged coup, which were among the find­ings con­tained in the on­go­ing SSA au­dit, Figueira said sev­er­al ques­tions had arisen.

These in­clude:

1. Why didn’t the over­sight struc­ture of the SSA, in light of the scut­tle­butt that was ram­pant through­out the ranks of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, pick up the scent of these ac­tions and ex­er­cise their reg­u­la­to­ry pow­ers to ex­pose and pros­e­cute the guilty?

2. Is it be­cause the SSA is so heav­i­ly politi­cised that its over­sight struc­ture or ca­pac­i­ty is paral­ysed?

3. Why make such a state­ment un­der par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege when the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing?

4. Is this a re­peat of the case of the Scott Drug Re­port, which was made pub­lic, there­by de­stroy­ing its ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty as ev­i­dence in crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion?

5. Why re­veal to the pub­lic that some 70,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion pur­chased with tax­pay­ers’ funds by the SSA are now not ac­count­ed for by the SSA and that in fact, their where­abouts are un­known?

6. What can the pub­lic, know­ing of this grave threat, do to re­cov­er the am­mu­ni­tion that the SSA does not know?

7. To pur­chase and dis­ap­pear 70, 000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion from the on­ly civil­ian in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing agency in T&T charged with en­gag­ing in transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime, is it ex­pect­ed that the plot­ters have loose lips?

8. If the coup plot­ters have loose lips, why, to date, has the am­mu­ni­tion has not been re­cov­ered by the State?

9. Who are the coup plot­ters work­ing for?

10. Are they re­li­gious cultists who want state pow­er by any means nec­es­sary to cleanse and sanc­ti­fy T&T for their God, or are they in the em­ploy of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime?

Figueira warned, “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and tastes like cur­ry duck, then it is a duck.”

“Check your­self,” he urged.

The crim­i­nol­o­gist said Row­ley had to ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and al­so ac­count for his choic­es. “The fact of the mat­ter is that the buck stops with the PM, as the choice of di­rec­tor for the SSA was his call, as all such calls in the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus are."

He fur­ther ques­tioned, “Where was the de­tailed sur­veil­lance re­port on the prospec­tive di­rec­tor be­fore he was giv­en the job? Did it re­veal all his per­son­al habits, al­liances, foibles, and per­son­al­i­ty?”

The au­dit

Dur­ing last Wednes­day’s sit­ting, Dr Row­ley dis­closed some of the find­ings con­tained in the SSA au­dit that was ini­ti­at­ed in March af­ter the Spe­cial Branch pre­sent­ed cer­tain in­for­ma­tion to him as head of the NSC.

The in­for­ma­tion re­sult­ed in for­mer SSA di­rec­tor Ma­jor Best be­ing sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave and re­placed by Gen­er­al (Ret’d) An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer. Best was lat­er fired.

The ex­ten­sive in­ter­nal re­view and au­dit of the SSA has been on­go­ing since March 2, when the for­mer am­bas­sador was in­stalled as the act­ing SSA di­rec­tor. Since the au­dit start­ed, three peo­ple have been charged and 28 peo­ple have been fired from the SSA.

The Stand­ing Or­ders

Or­der 18 of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Stand­ing Or­ders, out­lines the pro­ce­dure for a non-mem­ber to ap­ply to have their views placed on the par­lia­men­tary record if they claim that their per­son­al or pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion was tar­nished dur­ing a pre­vi­ous de­bate.

The Or­der states that in de­cid­ing whether to grant a re­quest, the House Speak­er must con­sid­er the ex­tent to which the ref­er­ence is ca­pa­ble of ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing the in­di­vid­ual’s rep­u­ta­tion; whether the mat­ter is triv­ial; and whether their in­tend­ed sub­mis­sion is friv­o­lous, vex­a­tious or of­fen­sive in char­ac­ter. The House Speak­er may al­so con­fer with the per­son seek­ing to make the sub­mis­sion and with the mem­ber, who re­ferred to the ap­pli­cant.