SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has rub­bished claims by the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress that the Gov­ern­ment has been spy­ing on cit­i­zens.

Speak­ing at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at the Diego Mar­tin South Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre last night, how­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted that soft­ware had been pur­chased for use by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) but it was be­ing used to mon­i­tor the ac­tiv­i­ties of crim­i­nals and not law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

Dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Mon­day night, Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing the Is­raeli-de­vel­oped Pe­ga­sus spy­ware to mon­i­tor a num­ber of peo­ple, in­clud­ing jour­nal­ists, mem­bers of the Ju­di­cia­ry, sit­ting mem­bers of the Par­lia­ment and even for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi.

Last night, the Prime Min­is­ter hit back, say­ing Mon­day was not the first time Per­sad-Bisses­sar had ac­cused the PNM of spy­ing on her.

“All of a sud­den, Trinidad and To­ba­go is North Ko­rea…and why would she do that? This is not the first time, I want to re­mind Trinidad and To­ba­go, that was the Op­po­si­tion, of it, there was a Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al ver­sion of that. When she came in­to of­fice in 2010, one of the first things she did was to de­stroy the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems of this coun­try by claim­ing she was be­ing spied on,” Row­ley said.

He said at that time, Per­sad-Bisses­sar fired 20 of the coun­try’s best-trained in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cers, which even­tu­al­ly cost the tax­pay­ers.

“The bot­tom line is it was all a lie,” he said.

He said Per­sad-Bissses­sar’s claims were be­ing ac­cept­ed by the me­dia with­out ques­tion, as he raised some ques­tions of his own.

“Pray tell, what would the Gov­ern­ment be spy­ing on mag­is­trates to find out?” he asked.

As he con­tin­ued, Row­ley said he want­ed to ex­plore what would have in­spired Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s “fit of mad­ness.”

He said as a Prime Min­is­ter, he has been in­formed of ac­tiv­i­ties in the coun­try that he, like oth­er prime min­is­ters be­fore him, must take to his grave. He said many coun­tries have leg­is­la­tion that re­quires this type of se­cre­cy for state se­crets.

“Be­cause in a state, in pro­tect­ing what is the state, you are re­quired on an on­go­ing ba­sis to be con­cerned about the se­cu­ri­ty of the state. So you have ma­chin­ery, per­son­nel and equip­ment to equip the state, to know what is hap­pen­ing to the state, what is threat­en­ing the state to know what you can do,” he said.

He said with the ad­vance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy, every ban­dit in the prison has con­tact with peo­ple on the out­side.

“And to­day in this tech­no­log­i­cal world, if the Gov­ern­ment has bought equip­ment for the SSA to be able to know what the gang lead­ers and the crim­i­nals are do­ing in this coun­try be­cause they do it on the phone, the best tool for the crim­i­nals in this coun­try, any­where in the world for that mat­ter, is that cell­phone sys­tem, so Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar wants us to stay out of that.”

He said the Op­po­si­tion did not sup­port leg­is­la­tion brought to the Par­lia­ment to make it il­le­gal for any­one to com­mu­ni­cate with pris­on­ers.

“I have to tell you that Mr (Fitzger­ald) Hinds knows and I know that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of mur­ders in this coun­try are hits called from in­side the prison.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was al­so aware of that and ques­tioned her rea­sons for re­leas­ing in­for­ma­tion on the Gov­ern­ment’s use of Pe­ga­sus.

“So why does she come here and tell the coun­try that if the SSA has the equip­ment to be able to be on the ball like every oth­er coun­try, in be­ing able to have in­for­ma­tion to pro­tect the State, why does she come and lie to the coun­try and say it is the Gov­ern­ment do­ing that to come and spy on every­body? What the hell are you do­ing that you don’t want the Gov­ern­ment to know? If you are a le­gal, law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, you don’t have that kind of prob­lem, on­ly the crim­i­nals have that kind of con­cern,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter then spent some time de­tail­ing his Gov­ern­ment’s achieve­ments in their sev­enth year in of­fice be­fore re­turn­ing to the Op­po­si­tion leader’s ac­cu­sa­tions.

“I can tell you it’s non­sense be­cause as chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, I want to tell you Trinidad and To­ba­go, that spy­ing sto­ry is all rub­bish,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

$500m not re­turned dur­ing de­mon­e­ti­za­tion process

As he lev­elled his own ac­cu­sa­tions against UNC leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar for fa­cil­i­tat­ing cor­rupt prac­tices dur­ing her tenure as Prime Min­is­ter, PM Row­ley re­vealed that in the 2020 de­mon­e­ti­za­tion of the $100 cot­ton bills, $500 mil­lion was not re­turned to the Cen­tral Bank.

“At the end of the de­mon­e­ti­za­tion, $500 mil­lion did not come back in­to the Cen­tral Bank. It means that you, the tax­pay­er, who was robbed in the be­gin­ning by the rob­bers, they had $500 mil­lion to give them if they came to ex­change it but they couldn’t come to ex­change it, so you prof­it,” he said.

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