Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says it is clear there was no plot by for­mer Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Agency (SSA) mem­bers to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment be­cause of the Prime Min­is­ter’s fail­ure to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion on the damn­ing mat­ter.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said in Par­lia­ment on Ju­ly 3 that some peo­ple for­mer­ly em­ployed with the SSA be­longed to a “cult” that was arm­ing it­self to re­place the Gov­ern­ment.

Mooni­lal said the lack of ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that this was an­oth­er dis­trac­tion sim­i­lar to the Email­gate scan­dal.

“The Op­po­si­tion will not be used by the Gov­ern­ment and Row­ley to con­duct a witch-hunt to de­fame peo­ple, to cre­ate scan­dal and bac­cha­nal where you have no re­port and no facts to go for­ward,” Mooni­lal said.

At the me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal pro­duced a doc­u­ment which he said was a per­for­mance as­sess­ment re­port from the SSA to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter cov­er­ing what it ac­com­plished be­tween Jan­u­ary 2020 to June 2022.

“And in this re­port, the SSA spells out all of its work, their chal­lenges, their mis­sion, their ob­jec­tives, how they have been work­ing with the po­lice.”

Mooni­lal said the doc­u­ment al­so showed that the SSA, on the re­quest of the Prime Min­is­ter, Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, part­nered with oth­er law en­force­ment and pro­tec­tive agen­cies to train per­son­nel, in­clu­sive of firearm train­ing.

“So, they com­plain to­day that the SSA has firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, they have that as well for train­ing,” he said.

The Oropouche East MP said it was clear Hinds was ap­prised of the go­ings on at the SSA and there­fore he could not take the po­si­tion that he was un­aware of the agency’s work.

“The fact that Row­ley re­fus­es to fire Hinds, means that Row­ley him­self does not be­lieve any coup at­tempt or any am­mu­ni­tion is un­ac­count­ed for oth­er­wise he would have fired the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty who has over­sight over this,” he said.

Mean­while, Hinds re­it­er­at­ed that the SSA probe was a po­lice mat­ter. 

Fol­low­ing the hand­ing over cer­e­mo­ny of four re­ports on how the coun­try could bet­ter its traf­fick­ing in per­sons stand­ing, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter was asked by re­porters about the de­nial by the for­mer head of the SSA Ma­jor Roger Best that he led a cultish group which plot­ted to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment. He said this was al­ready ad­dressed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. 

“The Prime Min­is­ter said that the mat­ters that he raised, all of which em­anat­ed from on­go­ing au­dits of all the process­es in the SSA, are gain­ing the at­ten­tion of the po­lice. That is what he said then and that is still the case now, there is noth­ing use­ful else I can add,” he said.

Be­fore he spoke on the SSA, Hinds thanked the US, through the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID) and the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP), fa­cil­i­tat­ed an ad­vi­sor to as­sist in bet­ter­ing T&T’s stand­ing in the US Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons re­port. 

Two weeks ago, this year’s re­port el­e­vat­ed T&T from Tier 2 Watch List to Tier 2. Hinds said the four re­ports, com­piled by An­toinette Lu­cas-An­drews, will as­sist the coun­try in reach­ing to Tier 1, ful­ly com­pli­ant.