Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley must take the re­port in­to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Firearm Users’ Li­cence (FUL) op­er­a­tions and clean his To­ba­go goat pen with it, since that is on­ly to un­der­mine Gary Grif­fith’s ap­pli­ca­tion for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, says UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal.

He made the com­ment at Thurs­day’s UNC me­dia brief­ing in re­sponse to Row­ley’s re­cent dis­clo­sure about the com­plet­ed FUL re­port.

Mooni­lal claimed the re­port was “part of a deep­en­ing con­spir­a­cy in­volv­ing ap­pli­ca­tions” for the CoP post and the UNC wasn’t sur­prised it arose when it be­came clear Grif­fith had reap­plied for the post.

Mooni­lal al­leged Row­ley had “com­mis­sioned his own in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which many of us be­lieve is il­le­gal, in­to the firearms unit of the TTPS ... the TTPS is an in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tion, politi­cians ought not to be es­tab­lish­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to any TTPS unit. Dr Row­ley has done that.”

“He claims now to have a re­port in his hand that he says is ‘shock­ing’ ... he hav­ing ap­point­ed the peo­ple, paid them,” Mooni­lal al­leged.

“And he has the ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry which he in­tends to lay in Par­lia­ment. To­day, I tell Dr Kei­th Row­ley - take that ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry, take it to To­ba­go to that goat pen and clean the goat pen with it—use that in the goat pen in To­ba­go. Don’t even waste time bring­ing that to Par­lia­ment.”

Mooni­lal added: “That is just a hoax and a scan­dal and that is re­al­ly to un­der­mine Grif­fith’s ap­pli­ca­tion—don’t bring it there. Don’t let (Fitzger­ald) Hinds bring it there, whether it rain or it sun. Don’t let him bring any re­port to Par­lia­ment deal­ing with any scan­dalous mat­ter of the TTPS un­less that has been prop­er­ly done by the po­lice them­selves.

“The po­lice have the ca­pac­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate ... but politi­cians ought not to be com­mis­sion­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to any mat­ter where you’re do­ing it for the sole pur­pose of de­fam­ing any ap­pli­cant to pub­lic of­fice.”

Af­ter the re­cent Law As­so­ci­a­tion meet­ing where a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al failed, Mooni­lal called on the Board of In­land Rev­enue to au­dit lawyers get­ting State briefs whom he claimed aren’t de­clar­ing that for tax pur­pos­es.

He said many lawyers get­ting briefs should be au­dit­ed to ex­am­ine the amount of mon­ey they col­lect in briefs, vis a vis their tax de­c­la­ra­tion.

“We’re told there are peo­ple re­ceiv­ing monies and not de­clar­ing it for tax pur­pos­es. BIR, open your eyes and fo­cus on some of the lawyers get­ting briefs and not de­clar­ing for tax pur­pos­es and cheat­ing the pub­lic of tax rev­enue,” he claimed.

He said At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour has com­mand of these lawyers and they stand and say ‘this is a good boy’, re­fer­ring to the LATT meet­ing.

Mooni­lal de­fend­ed Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar against news­pa­per ed­i­to­ri­als which took is­sue with her at­tacks on lawyers at the LATT meet­ing.

“It was a bla­tant naked dire at­tack dri­ven by mal­ice and po­lit­i­cal in­stinct of these pa­pers and should be con­demned, it was hyp­o­crit­i­cal,” he claimed, query­ing why noth­ing was writ­ten when Row­ley had at­tacked LATT.

Mooni­lal claimed “char­ac­ter wit­ness­es” were arranged for Ar­mour at the LATT meet­ing. But he said that can’t help Ar­mour, since the is­sue was re­al­ly Ar­mour’s sit­u­a­tion with the Flori­da court.