“The name Wat­son Duke has nev­er come up in any con­ver­sa­tion be­tween me and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or any oth­er po­lice of­fi­cer.”

This was the re­sponse from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day, as he dis­missed claims by Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal that a “high po­lit­i­cal fig­ure” tried to take away the le­gal firearm be­long­ing to the head of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) Wat­son Duke.

In a re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia ques­tions on the is­sue raised by Mooni­lal on Mon­day, the PM said while he “usu­al­ly ig­nores” Mooni­lal, he would re­spond as this was a spe­cif­ic al­le­ga­tion about Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty busi­ness.

“I have nev­er asked the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er or any of­fi­cer to take away any firearm in the pos­ses­sion of Wat­son Duke or any oth­er per­son,” Row­ley said.

“A few months ago, in a meet­ing of el­e­ments of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and oth­ers, chaired by me, and in­clud­ing some mem­bers of coun­cil, the is­sue of con­cerns about the pro­lif­er­a­tion of firearms li­cences came up.

“And in ref­er­ence to the wide­spread in­stances of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and vi­o­lence against women, it was en­quired of the Com­mis­sion­er whether it was the pol­i­cy of the po­lice to grant Firearm User’s Li­cence to a per­son on a rape charge or con­vict­ed felons who are de­port­ed in­to our com­mu­ni­ty.

“This was in the con­text of the then con­ver­sa­tion that it was the con­sti­tu­tion­al right of any and all cit­i­zens to ap­ply for and re­ceive a firearm user’s li­cence.”

Speak­ing at the UNC’s Vir­tu­al Fo­rum on Mon­day, Mooni­lal said he had in­for­ma­tion that “... a high po­lit­i­cal of­fi­cial from To­ba­go” had sought to use their in­flu­ence by “pres­sur­ing and in­tim­i­dat­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice” to seize Duke’s firearm in light of pend­ing charges in the mag­is­trate’s court.

Mooni­lal said Row­ley had tried to “dis­arm” Duke on the plat­form with those com­ments. He queried if ef­forts had al­so been on dis­arm­ing Duke phys­i­cal­ly.

Mooni­lal al­so want­ed Row­ley to ex­plain whether he had knowl­edge of any high Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial who sought to in­flu­ence the process for dis­tri­b­u­tion of firearm li­cens­es - par­tic­u­lar­ly to seek to ob­tain a li­cense for a spe­cialised weapon for killing pigs. He said the re­quest for a li­cense was turned down. He al­so queried if some­one in To­ba­go had want­ed a li­cense to sell guns and this was re­ject­ed. Mooni­lal asked if Gov­ern­ment want­ed ex-Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith gone be­cause he “re­fused to break the law.”