Af­ter just un­der one month of in­car­cer­a­tion, Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed are now free. They were held un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders is­sued by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der. I ex­pect­ed the “in­tel­li­gence” he re­ceived at that time to de­vel­op in­to con­clu­sive ev­i­dence. I am un­aware that it ever did. Wouldn’t the cou­ple have been crim­i­nal­ly charged by now if it had?

When At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie re­tained four promi­nent British bar­ris­ters (three of them KCs) to deal with the case, it seemed the case was clear-cut. I nev­er ap­pre­ci­at­ed why AG Je­re­mie felt high-forex-priced le­gal coun­sel were nec­es­sary, though. Now, it looks like all that ex­tra forex was wast­ed. They failed to con­vince the Privy Coun­cil to fa­cil­i­tate the State’s re­quest for an emer­gency hear­ing as they sought to over­turn the Court of Ap­peal’s rul­ing that the Hadeeds should be tran­si­tioned to “house ar­rest.” An­oth­er Court of Ap­peal pan­el on­ly grant­ed a stay for the sub­se­quent Privy Coun­cil ap­pli­ca­tion, which was de­nied. Would the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice have been as dis­mis­sive? What is the bill to the State thus far? Can we get val­ue for mon­ey from now?

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Alexan­der has re­voked his PDOs for Hadeeds. Oth­er­wise, they would have had to re­main in State cus­tody un­til the Privy Coun­cil re­con­venes in Oc­to­ber. The term used was “dis­pro­por­tion­ate,” and there was the fac­tor of a med­ical con­di­tion. Would “dis­pro­por­tion­ate” still have been the rea­son if Mr Hadeed’s med­ical con­di­tion had wors­ened but the Privy Coun­cil had de­ter­mined he should re­main de­tained? Are there oth­er un­well de­tainees who could claim their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion threat­ens their lives or health to make their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion un­fair and un­just?

If the Hadeeds had posed a clear and present dan­ger to mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment on their ini­tial de­ten­tion, what cir­cum­stances would have changed which would have re­duced or neu­tralised such a threat? They are not even un­der house ar­rest, hav­ing re­turned to the lib­er­ty they en­joyed pre-PDOs. Are mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment safe from them now? Sev­en­ty-year-old Star Sab­ga, it seems, re­mains a threat. She has not been re­leased. Could any or all of them have been charged with less­er of­fences if not “con­spir­a­cy to mur­der,” or even “sedi­tion?” Some sec­tors of so­ci­ety have been throw­ing around terms like “po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion,” “witch hunt,” “vin­dic­tive­ness” and “weapon­is­ing the SoE” amongst oth­ers.

AG Je­re­mie’s par­lia­men­tary pre­sen­ta­tion, which pre­ced­ed the PDOs, has pro­vid­ed con­text. I re­mem­ber a “UNC lawyer” ac­cus­ing me of be­ing “ridicu­lous” and “very pre­sump­tu­ous” when I pre­dict­ed that Je­re­mie would be­come AG ahead of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress elec­tion win in 2025. Per­haps PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will fi­nal­ly dust off the Lord Mustill re­port, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s 2009 “no con­fi­dence” vote, Je­re­mie’s fail­ure to be ap­point­ed as a Court of Ap­peal Judge in 2024, amongst oth­er con­cerns. Will he get a “buss head” from her? Will this UNC Gov­ern­ment fi­nal­ly get an AG from the UNC par­ty? Will lo­cal SCs be pre­ferred over KCs? Will the CCJ be con­sid­ered over the Privy Coun­cil? Didn’t the JCPC them­selves sug­gest that the Hadeeds’ mat­ter could have been re­solved in our own ju­ris­dic­tion?

Did the SoE fool AG Je­re­mie and Min­is­ter Alexan­der in­to be­liev­ing PDOs were some sort of “cheat code?” It must be a se­ri­ous blow to the UNC when Faris Al-Rawi fea­tures promi­nent­ly in the Hadeeds’ le­gal team, which has de­liv­ered them home against Min­is­ter Alexan­der, AG Je­re­mie and their high-pow­ered, high-priced KCs. Per­haps Alexan­der will soon be able to fo­cus on con­stituen­cy mat­ters in Tu­na­puna. Per­haps UNC mem­bers will fi­nal­ly re­mem­ber for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) AG Je­re­mie’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in mat­ters re­lat­ed to the founder of their par­ty, for­mer PM Bas­deo Pan­day.

In the PNM’s most fiery meet­ing since their GE2025 trounc­ing, Op­po­si­tion Leader Beck­les-Robin­son called out to the “100,000” PNM vot­ers who aban­doned their par­ty in GE2025 to re­turn for LGE2027. She was al­so very se­cure as she wel­comed all for­mer PNM min­is­ters and MPs. This is some­thing this UNC Gov­ern­ment must learn quick­ly. There is no place for vin­dic­tive­ness or in­se­cu­ri­ty in pow­er­ful lead­er­ship.

The bum­bling with the Hadeeds’ mat­ter may yet serve to cre­ate mar­tyrs in­stead of dis­ci­plin­ing per­sons per­ceived as be­yond the reach of the law. There may be many more twists and turns to go, as is the cus­tom with what pass­es for jus­tice in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but as of now it is 1- nil to the Hadeeds.

Are lim­it­ed state re­sources be­ing used to fight per­ceived po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents? Couldn’t those re­sources be bet­ter used to pay the NPUPS work­ers? The NPUPS is a suc­ces­sor to pro­grammes like CEPEP for low­er-in­come work­ers. Such work­ers and their fam­i­lies are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble. Mem­bers of my own com­mu­ni­ty al­so reached out to the me­dia last week due to frus­tra­tion over the de­plorable state of the roads in one of the safest UNC-held con­stituen­cies, where no road im­prove­ment work was done for the past 11 years. These con­stituents have wait­ed pa­tient­ly for the “bet­ter days,” and they are very per­cep­tive re­gard­ing Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture. They are will­ing to sup­port all of the Gov­ern­ment’s eco­nom­ic stim­uli, but they ex­pect their cir­cum­stances to im­prove sig­nif­i­cant­ly. How­ev­er, re­cent events have them con­cerned about their Gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ties. With LGE2027 less than a year away, the high and mighty must be­ware a rude awak­en­ing.