KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is ques­tion­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s claim that it has ev­i­dence of a con­spir­a­cy to as­sas­si­nate Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, say­ing if ev­i­dence of such a se­ri­ous crime ex­ists, the mat­ter should be test­ed be­fore the courts.

Fol­low­ing the leaked au­dio tape of an in­ter­cept­ed tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Genevieve Hadeed and her aunt Star Sab­ga, Beck­les ar­gued that au­thor­i­ties have re­peat­ed­ly claimed to pos­sess in­tel­li­gence link­ing in­di­vid­u­als to se­ri­ous crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, yet have re­lied on the State of Emer­gency (SoE) and Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) in­stead of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions. 

She ques­tioned why, if in­ves­ti­ga­tors pos­sess ev­i­dence of such a con­spir­a­cy, no crim­i­nal charges have been laid.

Dur­ing an Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Beck­les said, “If you have ev­i­dence of a con­spir­a­cy to mur­der, you are sim­ply go­ing to use the State of Emer­gency? For such a se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion, how is it that you haven’t charged them? So you con­tin­u­ous­ly use the State of Emer­gency and the PDO?”

Beck­les said the is­sue formed part of what she de­scribed as a broad­er ef­fort by the Gov­ern­ment to di­vert at­ten­tion from crime, not­ing that af­ter 15 months in of­fice it had yet to un­veil a com­pre­hen­sive crime plan.

She in­sist­ed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will not be dis­tract­ed by what she de­scribed as the Gov­ern­ment’s at­tempts to shift the pub­lic’s fo­cus from crime.

Asked if she be­lieves the au­dio tape de­scribed a re­al threat to the Prime Min­is­ter, she said that was not for her to de­ter­mine, but for the courts.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about ref­er­ences in the leaked au­dio to Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young by Sab­ga and claims by Hadeed that they were sup­port­ers of the PNM, Beck­les cau­tioned against draw­ing con­clu­sions sim­ply be­cause a per­son’s name ap­peared in a con­ver­sa­tion.

She said Young’s name be­ing men­tioned should not be viewed as ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing, say­ing any­one’s name could be men­tioned in a con­ver­sa­tion.

She al­so ex­pressed con­cern over what she de­scribed as at­tempts to in­ject race in­to the pub­lic dis­course sur­round­ing the leaked au­dio record­ing.

While de­clin­ing to com­ment di­rect­ly on mat­ters be­fore the court, she re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the PNM should be as­so­ci­at­ed with any par­tic­u­lar eth­nic group, say­ing the par­ty stood for in­ter­ra­cial sol­i­dar­i­ty.