Gail Alexan­der

Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal has called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to say if he re­ceived at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre a fe­male Po­lice Con­sta­ble named Mar­shall who came to give in­for­ma­tion on for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

Dur­ing the UNC’s Mon­day night fo­rum, Mooni­lal ques­tioned if that was the of­fi­cer who did a search war­rant re­gard­ing a woman who was on a plea­sure boat. But he said the war­rant was to search a house for breach of health reg­u­la­tions.

“She’s in­volved in sen­si­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tions. If it’s true she went there, we must know what was her pur­pose there,” Mooni­lal said as he ac­cused Row­ley of set­ting up a “Gestapo po­lice ser­vice.”

“(Row­ley) must al­so say why he lost con­fi­dence in Grif­fith and if it was be­cause Grif­fith didn’t want to lock up in­no­cent peo­ple? In fu­ture will some of­fi­cers be go­ing to Row­ley with in­for­ma­tion?”

On an­oth­er mat­ter, Mooni­lal ad­mit­ted the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ be­hav­iour in Par­lia­ment last Thurs­day—on its mo­tion against the Pres­i­dent—was “un­be­com­ing of a be­hav­iour for a Bish­op’s tea par­ty” but it had re­turned the Par­lia­ment to the British-type de­fend­ed, West­min­ster sys­tem.

Mooni­lal said the UNC had strate­gised care­ful­ly on its con­duct for the de­bate so that no MP would be eject­ed from the Cham­ber.

He turned his at­ten­tion out­side of the Par­lia­ment as he called on for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Chair­man “Bliss (Seep­er­sad) where is the mer­it list?”

Mooni­lal claimed that with­out a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er cur­rent­ly, ter­ror­ists can send funds to their co­horts, no or­ders to freeze their as­sets can be done and no probe can be or­dered in­to sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions. He not­ed pro­mo­tions and oth­er mat­ters re­quir­ing the at­ten­tion and au­thor­i­ty of a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice are al­so on hold.

Rev­o­lu­tion un­der­way

Mean­while, the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ peace­ful Oc­to­ber Rev­o­lu­tion has be­gun and it will be con­duct­ed lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in a va­ri­ety of ways, ac­cord­ing to UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar.

Speak­ing on Mon­day night, she added, “This is not a rev­o­lu­tion of vi­o­lence, of ill-will or any mal­ice to desta­bilise our na­tion. Like the Oc­to­ber Rev­o­lu­tion in an­oth­er coun­try, we are here to fight against the abu­sive pow­er by would-be Kings, Queens, Czars, and Czari­nas. We are fight­ing for a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic, against the PNM and Row­ley dic­ta­tor­ship.

“We will con­tin­ue to en­gage in par­lia­men­tary ac­tion, but we will al­so take ac­tion on the ground, in the streets, on­line, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, with our loy­al and trust­ed sup­port­ers, al­so with all oth­er peo­ple who love free­dom and democ­ra­cy and don’t want to be ruled over by a Kei­th Row­ley dic­ta­tor­ship.“

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “We’ll be en­gag­ing in on the ground mo­bil­i­sa­tion of par­ty mem­bers, pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion, in­ter­na­tion­al out­reach, and out­reach to non-tra­di­tion­al vot­ers.

“The Oc­to­ber Rev­o­lu­tion will save T&T from Kei­th Row­ley and the PNM. It is a move­ment, lo­cal, na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al, to build a mod­ern Par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy...a rev­o­lu­tion of unit­ed strength to stand up to those in our na­tion who be­lieve they have the di­vine rights of Kings and Queens.”

She in­sist­ed there will not be any vi­o­lence, “It will be a peace­ful rev­o­lu­tion of unit­ed pur­pose aimed at po­lit­i­cal­ly de­mol­ish­ing those forces which pre­vent cit­i­zens from en­joy­ing the stan­dard of liv­ing they de­serve and pre­vent­ing our cit­i­zens from ac­com­plish­ing the goals they have and pre­vent them from pro­gress­ing. We see all across the coun­try cit­i­zens have been ris­ing up de­mand­ing bet­ter from this Gov­ern­ment who does noth­ing but squan­der and pock­et their tax­es.”

“I say to cit­i­zens of T&T, join the rev­o­lu­tion for if we do not fight for a bet­ter to­mor­row, no one will. We can­not sit and wait for bet­ter days. We must act. Join the Rev­o­lu­tion and let us trans­form this na­tion in­to one that tru­ly serves the peo­ple.”