AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt 

While for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is op­ti­mistic about the per­for­mance of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, he ques­tions the split in re­spon­si­bil­i­ties be­tween the two min­istries and the pro­posed Stand Your Ground leg­is­la­tion.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew on Tues­day, Grif­fith said he be­lieves in the lead­er­ship po­ten­tial of the new­ly ap­point­ed min­is­ters, adding that he doubts they could per­form worse than their pre­de­ces­sor.

“The on­ly way you could go is up. I think the worst min­is­ter in any min­istry in the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go was Fitzger­ald Hinds,” Grif­fith said. 

He said that even if the cur­rent of­fice­hold­ers may not be ex­perts in the field of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, “if it is that they work around cer­tain per­sons who can guide them ac­cord­ing­ly...they will work in tan­dem with each oth­er.”

How­ev­er, Grif­fith not­ed the pub­lic con­fu­sion over the UNC-led Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to split the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in­to sep­a­rate port­fo­lios. He stressed there was a need for clar­i­ty.

In a for­mer role as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vi­sor, Grif­fith said he had long pub­licly ad­vo­cat­ed for split­ting the port­fo­lios, but raised con­cerns about how the di­vi­sion was im­ple­ment­ed. Par­tic­u­lar­ly, the de­ci­sion to name one arm the ‘Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty’, which he said can cause some de­gree of con­fu­sion in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“It was sup­posed to be the Min­istry of Home Af­fairs, not the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, be­cause Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty re­al­ly and tru­ly is a US term,” he said.

In his orig­i­nal re­search-based pro­pos­al, Grif­fith sug­gest­ed that T&T cre­ate a Min­istry of Home Af­fairs, fo­cus­ing on in­ter­nal law en­force­ment and polic­ing to pro­tect cit­i­zens. In con­trast, Grif­fith said the Min­istry of De­fence is meant to deal with bor­der pro­tec­tion, cus­toms se­cu­ri­ty and im­mi­gra­tion. 

But Grif­fith ques­tioned which port­fo­lio would over­see the SSA (Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency).

“Where you go­ing to put SSA? Is it go­ing to be un­der the Min­istry of Home Af­fairs? Be­cause it has to do with in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing for in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty…but al­so has a fun­da­men­tal part to play in in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing to pro­tect us from ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties.”

He al­so cau­tioned cit­i­zens against ac­cept­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pro­posed Stand Your Ground laws at face val­ue, warn­ing that a reck­less roll­out of firearms could open a ‘Pan­do­ra’s box.’

“You can­not go ahead and be willy-nil­ly to give every­one a firearm,” Grif­fith warned. 

“We have to be very vig­i­lant to make sure the right per­sons get it.” 

But Grif­fith ex­pressed con­fi­dence that Per­sad-Bisses­sar, de­spite lack­ing tech­ni­cal knowl­edge of firearms, had the lead­er­ship abil­i­ty to en­sure prop­er safe­guards.

“She didn’t know the dif­fer­ence be­tween a wa­ter gun and a Glock, but she had the lead­er­ship skill to know how to di­rect and del­e­gate.”