Richard Lord

Con­gress of the Peo­ple po­lit­i­cal leader Prakash Ra­mad­har is con­demn­ing Thurs­day's po­lice raid on News­day and is giv­ing Com­mis­sion of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs un­til to­day to ex­plain the rea­sons be­hind the 'atro­cious at­tack' on the me­dia. Ra­mad­har gave the 24-hour ul­ti­ma­tum dur­ing yes­ter­day's news con­fer­ence at the Par­lia­ment, Tow­er D, In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Port-of-Spain. Po­lice raid­ed News­day's of­fice in Port-of-Spain and the home of its po­lit­i­cal re­porter An­dre Ba­goo to de­ter­mine the source of a sto­ry pub­lished on De­cem­ber 20, 2011 about the a mat­ter be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

Ra­mad­har said if Gibbs failed to re­spond to his call, the COP had oth­er plans in place. "We don't act light­ly. There is al­ways a plan of ac­tion," the Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter added. Ra­mad­har said he was con­fi­dent that Gibbs will "act with alacrity" in the mat­ter. Ra­mad­har said he spoke with Gibbs about the po­lice raid but was un­able to re­veal the de­tails of the con­ver­sa­tion. He said Gibbs must in­form cit­i­zens of the of­fence be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by his of­fi­cers that war­rant­ed such a breach of the right of the free­dom of the press in T&T. Ra­mad­har said he was not sug­gest­ing that the po­lice did not have their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and du­ties but he said they must car­ry out those re­spon­si­bil­i­ties with­in the nar­row con­fines of the law.

Ra­mad­har said the COP "con­demn that ac­tion of the po­lice, whether it is a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion or not." He said in fu­ture any sim­i­lar war­rants should be au­tho­rised by a High Court judge. "If you don't have con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of your sources you have noth­ing. And this is an ar­row in the heart of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and au­thor­i­ty of the me­dia," The COP leader said. Ra­mad­har, who is the Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, said the cit­i­zens of T&T should now stand to­geth­er as one in de­fence of main­tain­ing press free­dom in the coun­try. "We see this as an atro­cious at­tack on the free­dom of the press. And we must all be vig­i­lant to en­sure that this is not re­peat­ed in the al­most cal­lous way it has been," he said.

Ra­mad­har said the lat­est in­ci­dent came in the wake of an­oth­er po­lice raid at CCN TV6 re­cent­ly. He said if the me­dia were not pro­tect­ed it could be si­lenced "and in si­lence any­thing can go." Ra­mad­har in­sist­ed that Gibbs' probe must be a mean­ing­ful one. He told re­porters that Gibbs did not have pri­or knowl­edge of the po­lice raid. "A mat­ter that im­pacts up­on a fun­da­men­tal hu­man right on an in­sti­tu­tion of state, a me­dia house, and he was not in the know," Ra­mad­har said.

Ra­mad­har said the me­dia should ques­tion Gibbs on his lack of knowl­edge of the raid. Ra­mad­har said oth­er Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters were ap­palled by the lat­est po­lice raid on the news­pa­per. "We have to ap­pre­ci­ate that the me­dia are in a sep­a­rate and spe­cial cat­e­go­ry. They are the pro­tec­tors of the rights of the peo­ple," he stressed.