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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Weak SSA structure must be addressed now

by

467 days ago
20240325

The is­sue of “Who’s Go­ing to Guard the Guards” at the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) is that the pierc­ing in­sight of de­ceased ca­lyp­so com­pos­er Wins­ford "Jok­er" Devine should not have been raised af­ter the fact, but that a strength­en­ing of the struc­ture, func­tion­ing of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, and con­stant scruti­ny of the lead­ers should have been a sine qua non – an ab­solute ne­ces­si­ty built in­to this ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty agency.

The fail­ure to have not on­ly struc­tured the or­gan­i­sa­tion in a way that could have avoid­ed the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty be­ing ex­posed is com­pound­ed with in­ter­est, as it is not a first time hap­pen­ing.

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in her role as prime min­is­ter (2010-2015), al­so ap­point­ed a tele­phone op­er­a­tor to head the SSA, and she and her min­is­ters tried to de­fend the ab­sur­di­ty of Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine's ap­point­ment be­fore pub­lic out­cry forced her fir­ing.

The ap­point­ment of Ma­jor Roger Best as SSA di­rec­tor was of a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent na­ture (and this ed­i­to­r­i­al is not mak­ing any al­le­ga­tion against him), but af­ter the pre­vi­ous mad­ness, that a suc­ces­sor gov­ern­ment would not have learnt from that ex­pe­ri­ence, and put in place a coun­ter­vail­ing sys­tem to up­grade the qual­i­ty of the SSA was ba­sic in mind-bog­gling.

The in­cum­bent Gov­ern­ment did not learn from the Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­as­ter.

If, in fact, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his Gov­ern­ment did in­sert a rig­or­ous mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem to close-mark the lead­ers and op­er­a­tions of the SSA, that has been a dra­mat­ic fail­ure, giv­en all that is now emerg­ing about ques­tion­able hires and op­er­a­tions of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. How could all of what has so far been re­vealed, and un­doubt­ed­ly more to come, have been go­ing on in this ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty agency for so long with­out de­tec­tion, is a crit­i­cal ques­tion to be asked and an­swered. If not an in­ter­ven­tion now, what could have been the re­sults of this tick­ing time bomb?

There is an­oth­er very im­por­tant as­pect of this mat­ter which needs at­ten­tion. In typ­i­cal re­flex op­po­si­tion pol­i­tics style, all the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar are do­ing is to shout for de­tails, and charge that the Prime Min­is­ter is seek­ing to es­tab­lish a po­lice state.

In­stead of trot­ting-out those emp­ty and tired al­le­ga­tions and mak­ing calls for the Prime Min­is­ter to say why the di­rec­tor of the SSA was sent on leave, and de­mand that he should make a full dis­clo­sure on a mat­ter at the start of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the Op­po­si­tion should have been cas­ti­gat­ing the Gov­ern­ment for leav­ing the SSA in an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al­ly vul­ner­a­ble po­si­tion.

In this re­spect, it can­not be stat­ed of­ten enough that the post-In­de­pen­dence pol­i­tics of mind­less op­po­si­tion for the sake of it has not ad­vanced the po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion of the coun­try.

But just so that this last point is not mis­un­der­stood, noth­ing can wash the Gov­ern­ment clean for not learn­ing from the pre­vi­ous lessons and so re­struc­tur­ing the SSA. In fact, that Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley did not ex­ert even tighter scruti­ny of the lead­er­ship and func­tion­ing of the or­gan­i­sa­tion is a se­ri­ous in­dict­ment on him and his Gov­ern­ment.

At the end of the on­go­ing, and what­ev­er law­ful and rea­son­able ac­tion can be tak­en against the per­pe­tra­tors, the re-or­gan­i­sa­tion of the SSA is sure­ly a ma­jor agen­da item which must be im­me­di­ate­ly done.


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