JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the ques­tion­ing of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher comes as no sur­prise to her and she says it is an in­di­ca­tion that the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led Gov­ern­ment has col­lapsed.

In re­sponse to a ques­tion from Guardian Me­dia about the de­vel­op­ments yes­ter­day sur­round­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­leged that the State of Emer­gency (SoE) might have been called to cov­er up fur­ther wrong­do­ing.

“This is no sur­prise to my­self or any­one that looked at my speech dur­ing the UNC’s Mon­day Night Fo­rum on Jan­u­ary 6. Cit­i­zens should ask if the re­al rea­son for the SoE was to im­ple­ment a gun amnesty to save oth­er Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials who are al­so un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which back­fired be­cause their dunce At­tor­ney Gen­er­al did not know that he would have had to come to Par­lia­ment for a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty to im­ple­ment it,” she claimed.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader added, “The Gov­ern­ment has col­lapsed. They must call an elec­tion. We will meet them on the ‘anenue’,” re­fer­ring to the mis­spelling of the Mor­vant/Laven­tille sign which was un­veiled on Wednes­day to greet mo­torists and vis­i­tors to the area.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has long been crit­i­cal of Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s han­dling of the crime sit­u­a­tion and lead­er­ship of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

Sources said the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice was be­ing ques­tioned in con­nec­tion with the grant­i­ng of FULs for high-pow­ered sniper ri­fles.

Her ques­tion­ing came af­ter the ar­rest of for­mer Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency di­rec­tor re­tired ma­jor Roger Best on Wednes­day night.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­peat­ed­ly called on Hare­wood-Christo­pher to re­sign, ac­cus­ing her of be­ing a fail­ure.

Last Feb­ru­ary, when dis­cus­sions arose re­gard­ing her tenure and if her con­tract would have been re­newed, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “The top cop’s tenure in of­fice is de­pend­ed on Cab­i­net ap­proval and re­new­ing that con­tract for her to stay on. So this is like her re­port card, her per­for­mance has been very poor, is true we ac­cept that, but her job couldn’t have been easy with the most in­com­pe­tent Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, that is Min­is­ter Hinds as a line min­is­ter.

“We can­not just say that Madame Christo­pher bad­ly per­formed, she has two per­sons in charge and an NSC, ob­vi­ous­ly they have to­tal­ly failed as well.”

Mean­while, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress deputy po­lit­i­cal leader and Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said news of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice be­ing ques­tioned was “dis­turb­ing.”

Mooni­lal, who is al­so the op­po­si­tion’s shad­ow na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, said the in­for­ma­tion com­ing out was too vague for him to com­ment on but de­scribed it as “an­oth­er dis­turb­ing event” this week.

For­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams and for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith both said they pre­ferred not to com­ment on the mat­ter, with Williams adding that he had no in­for­ma­tion to make an in­formed state­ment just yet.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC), which has pow­er over the po­lice ex­ec­u­tive, did not meet to dis­cuss the is­sue, while the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil called an emer­gency meet­ing on the mat­ter. Our sources said Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Op­er­a­tions, Ju­nior Ben­jamin was sum­moned to the NSC meet­ing, which is chaired by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who is head of the coun­cil.

Sev­er­al calls and mes­sages to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, as well as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ters Fitzger­ald Hinds and Kei­th Scot­land, went unan­swered up to late yes­ter­day evening.

When Guardian Me­dia went out­side the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s, where the NSC meet­ing was tak­ing place, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was spot­ted dri­ving out and when stopped, did not di­vulge any in­for­ma­tion on what tran­spired in the meet­ing.

Di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty David West said he did not want to com­ment on the mat­ter sur­round­ing Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher as it is still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.