JENSEN LA VENDE

& JESSE RAMDEO

Chief of De­fence Staff (CDS) Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel was fired and re­placed by Cap­tain Don Po­lo on Tues­day night.

This was con­firmed in a me­dia re­lease by the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 12 of the De­fence Act, Chap 14:01, ad­vised Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo to re­voke Daniel’s ap­point­ment and ap­point Po­lo.

The re­lease stat­ed: “The in­stru­ment of re­vo­ca­tion, as well as the in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment, were both served by the Min­is­ter of De­fence on the afore­men­tioned of­fi­cers short­ly af­ter 8 pm at the Tem­ple Court Of­fice of the Min­istry of De­fence. The Min­is­ter of De­fence thanked Air Vice Mar­shall Daniel for his un­prece­dent­ed eight-year stint as Chief of De­fence Staff.”

Daniel was ap­point­ed CDS in March 2019 and had re­ceived two ex­ten­sions be­yond his man­dat­ed re­tire­ment age. Po­lo, the next most se­nior of­fi­cer in the De­fence Force, is set to re­tire in 2027.

The me­dia re­lease added: “The de­ci­sion to bring an end to the ser­vice of Air Vice Mar­shall Daniel at this junc­ture was made af­ter lengthy de­lib­er­a­tions and ma­ture con­sid­er­a­tion and will in no way ad­verse­ly af­fect the op­er­a­tional ef­fec­tive­ness of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force.”

Calls and mes­sages to Po­lo, Daniel, Sturge and oth­er se­nior of­fi­cers of the De­fence Force all went unan­swered yes­ter­day.

The shake-up comes amidst a State of Emer­gency where mem­bers of the De­fence Force are giv­en in­creased pow­ers and plans to in­crease the work­load of reg­i­ment mem­bers in prison op­er­a­tions. Some mem­bers are cur­rent­ly as­sist­ing in se­cur­ing the hous­ing of high-risk in­mates at two Ch­aguara­mas bases.

The re­vo­ca­tion was raised yes­ter­day by Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who again warned of a Gov­ern­ment cam­paign to re­move ex­ec­u­tive pro­fes­sion­als across key State en­ti­ties, in­clud­ing Daniel’s re­moval, say­ing it could have far-reach­ing con­se­quences for the coun­try’s sta­bil­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

At a me­dia brief­ing at the of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader in Port-of-Spain, Gon­za­les cau­tioned cit­i­zens to be wary of what he de­scribed as the Gov­ern­ment’s desta­bil­is­ing ac­tions against ex­pe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als.

“The Op­po­si­tion is call­ing up­on the Prime Min­is­ter, as chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, to ex­plain what is tak­ing place in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in this coun­try. Our un­der­stand­ing is that that de­ci­sion that oc­curred last night, where the Chief of De­fence Staff was sent on im­me­di­ate leave by Her Ex­cel­len­cy, the Pres­i­dent, is al­ready con­tribut­ing to in­sta­bil­i­ty in the ranks of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force. These are mat­ters that must be treat­ed sen­si­tive­ly.”

Gon­za­les con­tend­ed that shake-ups across arms of se­cu­ri­ty dur­ing a State of Emer­gency do not serve to in­stil pub­lic con­fi­dence.

“We have heard the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er sent on leave dur­ing a State of Emer­gency. It should con­cern every­one that why dur­ing a State of Emer­gency, the head of one of your key se­cu­ri­ty in­sti­tu­tions was sent on leave, and whilst all of that was hap­pen­ing, you are hear­ing of move­ments tak­ing place in the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and con­trary to what oth­ers may say, I am say­ing it is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter when you are hear­ing of these changes tak­ing place in key ar­eas of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

He said while it is cus­tom­ary for a new ad­min­is­tra­tion to ap­point its own state board mem­bers, the con­tin­ued dis­missal of ex­ec­u­tives and tech­ni­cal ex­perts rep­re­sents a di­rect at­tack on the coun­try’s in­sti­tu­tion­al strength.

“It is one thing, and as bad as it is to re­move your best minds at the lev­el of the boards in the state en­ter­pris­es, and when you at­tack your pro­fes­sion­al class in the way the pro­fes­sion­al class is be­ing at­tacked to­day, it is go­ing to im­pact the qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance in this coun­try.”

He cit­ed dis­missals across sev­er­al state en­ti­ties, in­clud­ing the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), First Cit­i­zens Bank (FCB), Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, and Caribbean Air­lines (CAL), as ev­i­dence of what he called a trou­bling pat­tern of po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed in­ter­fer­ence.

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi raised con­cerns over the re­cent re­lo­ca­tion of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau (ACIB) to the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to clear­ly ex­plain whether the change is pure­ly ad­min­is­tra­tive or some­thing more sub­stan­tive.

An er­ra­tum pub­lished in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gazette (Ex­tra­or­di­nary) on Oc­to­ber 5 in­di­cat­ed that the ACIB “should have been pub­lished as a gov­ern­ment de­part­ment un­der the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs.”

The ad­just­ment places the spe­cialised in­ves­tiga­tive unit, which fo­cus­es on cor­rup­tion and mis­con­duct in­volv­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials, back un­der the purview of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, six years af­ter it was trans­ferred out to en­sure op­er­a­tional in­de­pen­dence and avoid po­ten­tial po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

Al-Rawi, a for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al, said Gov­ern­ment must make its in­ten­tions clear.

“The rea­son it was moved was be­cause any ap­pear­ance of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence must not fea­ture in po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions, even if it in­volved our own gov­ern­ment and our own min­is­ters and our cab­i­net po­si­tion, which came for­ward was very crit­i­cal in man­ag­ing our struc­tures,” he said.