Sacha Wil­son

Twen­tythree years af­ter it was laid in Par­lia­ment, the con­tro­ver­sial Scott Drug Re­port has sur­faced on the 2010 elec­tion cam­paign.

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, speak­ing at a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing at Tabaquite Wednes­day night, raised is­sues in the re­port con­cern­ing the cur­rent Tabaquite MP, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, and deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan. Yes­ter­day, both Ma­haraj and Ram­bachan re­spond­ed to Man­ning, with Ma­haraj even threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion if the Prime Min­is­ter per­sists. Ram­bachan said if Man­ning has ev­i­dence he was in­volved in a crim­i­nal act, then he should cause him to be charged.

Yes­ter­day, Ram­bachan said he was nev­er found guilty of any of­fence. He said: "I heard some­thing like that (was said). If I was guilty of any­thing they should have charged me. "If he (Man­ning) has any ev­i­dence that I have done some­thing wrong then he should cause me to be charged." Hold­ing up a doc­u­ment at the meet­ing, Man­ning said he was quot­ing from the re­port which was laid in Par­lia­ment in Feb­ru­ary 1987 af­ter a one-man com­mis­sion of en­quiry was held. He said then Prime Min­is­ter ANR Robin­son ex­on­er­at­ed Ram­bachan with­out a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Ma­haraj, who is seek­ing a sec­ond term as Tabaquite MP, called a press con­fer­ence hours lat­er to re­fute the al­le­ga­tions.

"The al­le­ga­tions made against me and Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan were sub­se­quent­ly shown to be false." He said the charges in re­spect to these al­le­ga­tions were dis­missed by a court of law since the 1980s. He said those al­le­ga­tions sur­faced at a time when he was the pres­i­dent of the T&T Bu­reau for Hu­man Rights. He said he fought bat­tles against the Gov­ern­ment for in­jus­tices and was a cor­rup­tion buster. Ma­haraj said Man­ning was aware he was ar­rest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed in the 1980s in an at­tempt to si­lence him.

He added: "The al­le­ga­tions made against me in the re­port re­ferred to by Mr Man­ning were fab­ri­cat­ed. It was wrong, there­fore, for Mr Man­ning to make these false al­le­ga­tions both against me and Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan. Ma­haraj warned Man­ning any con­tin­u­a­tion of these false im­pres­sion of the facts with­out the pro­tec­tion of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege, en­ti­tles him to con­sid­er tak­ing le­gal ac­ton.

?THE SCOTT DRUG RE­PORT

The Drug Re­port was com­mis­sioned by then Pres­i­dent, Sir El­lis Clarke, on a rec­om­men­da­tion of the late Prime Min­is­ter, George Cham­bers. The one-man com­mis­sion was con­duct­ed by for­mer Jus­tice of Ap­peal, Garvin Scott. The com­mis­sion took ev­i­dence in se­cret and from a num­ber of sus­pi­cious un­der­world char­ac­ters. A num­ber of peo­ple were im­pli­cat­ed with­out be­ing able to de­fend them­selves. The re­port was leaked in Bar­ba­dos, and then found its way in the T&T Par­lia­ment. Fifty-two po­lice of­fi­cers were im­pli­cat­ed and they were sus­pend­ed. Af­ter more than two years, no one was charged and all 52 of­fi­cers were ex­on­er­at­ed. Some re­turned to ac­tive du­ty while oth­ers de­cid­ed to leave the ser­vice.

Tak­ing the fall, how­ev­er, was then Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Ran­dolph Bur­roughs, who was charged with two of­fences - traf­fick­ing co­caine at Cali Bay, Cou­va, and con­spir­a­cy to mur­der two per­sons at La­dy Young Road, Mor­vant. He was ac­quit­ted on both charges, but he nev­er re­turned to the Po­lice Ser­vice. Af­ter be­ing la­belled a hero and ace crime fight­er, Bur­roughs' spir­its were bro­ken and he griev­ed to death.