Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan yes­ter­day de­fend­ed the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice as he dis­missed Op­po­si­tion calls for in­de­pen­dent for­eign in­ves­ti­ga­tors to probe the con­tro­ver­sial e-mails re­vealed in Par­lia­ment last week.He said the of­fi­cers had al­ready writ­ten to him in­di­cat­ing their in­ten­tion to ques­tion him and to ac­cess his cell­phone and oth­er de­vices in the mat­ter.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, PNM Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi called for a for­eign in­de­pen­dent probe of the e-mails af­ter rais­ing is­sues about the in­tegri­ty of the six-man po­lice prob­ing team.In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse at his Tabaquite con­stituen­cy's In­di­an Ar­rival Day-Cur­ry Duck and Tas­sa Com­pe­ti­tion at Sur­prise Recre­ation Ground, Gas­par­il­lo, yes­ter­day, Ram­bachan dis­missed the call.

"I think that the Po­lice Ser­vice has demon­strat­ed that they are ca­pa­ble of be­ing in­de­pen­dent and they have been in­de­pen­dent...They do their work with­out fear or favour," he said."The Po­lice Ser­vice have ar­rest­ed politi­cians in the past, they have tak­en politi­cians to court, it is there. I do not see why they (the Op­po­si­tion) are sud­den­ly afraid that the Po­lice Ser­vice can­not do an in­de­pen­dent job.""It is very un­for­tu­nate that the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion is ex­press­ing such un­favourable com­ments about the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice."

Last Mon­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley un­veiled the 31 con­tentious e-mails in the House.The con­tents of the e-mails al­leged­ly ex­posed a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy by high of­fice-hold­ers to dis­cred­it and phys­i­cal­ly harm a jour­nal­ist who broke the Sec­tion 34 sto­ry, to of­fer the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) a judge­ship to get him out of of­fice and to ac­cept pay­ment from an un­named per­son in ex­change for free­dom in re­la­tion to the Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co.

The e-mails were pur­port­ed to be from ad­dress­es be­long­ing to the PM, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er to the PM, Gary Grif­fith.Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Gov­ern­ment have de­nied any knowl­edge of the e-mails, but the PM wrote to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams, ask­ing that it be probed. Williams in turn man­dat­ed Richard­son to head the probe.

Yes­ter­day, Ram­bachan, said the po­lice had sent him a let­ter re­quest­ing his per­son­al com­put­er and his Black­Ber­ry smart­phone.He said has no ob­jec­tion to com­ply­ing with the po­lice re­quest."I will re­spond to the let­ter on Mon­day and I will make my­self avail­able, as well as pro­vide, as I said in my Par­lia­men­tary con­tri­bu­tion, my per­son­al com­put­er and my Black­Ber­ry phone for them," he said.

"They have asked me to pro­vide them ac­cess so they can see e-mails be­tween Sep­tem­ber 1 and Sep­tem­ber 30, 2012, and that is some­thing I will do. I have no prob­lems with that." The Tabaquite MP said Row­ley's re­cent ac­tions clear­ly show "he (Row­ley) does not re­al­ly have a leg to stand on."It does not mat­ter who are the in­ves­ti­ga­tors are, whether they are lo­cal or they are for­eign or wher­ev­er," he said.

"The fact is it was a fab­ri­ca­tion and Dr Row­ley is the one who should re­al­ly be un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion in this mat­ter." The min­is­ter said Row­ley has to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what he said and can­not use the "cloak of Par­lia­ment" to make al­le­ga­tions."It seems to me that Dr Row­ley has run in­to a bit of trou­ble and he is suf­fer­ing from self-in­flict­ed wounds," he said.

Ram­bachan al­so wel­comed the an­nounce­ment that the Par­lia­men­tary Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee will be meet­ing on Mon­day to de­lib­er­ate on Row­ley's state­ments dur­ing the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion last Mon­day in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.