The Move­ment of So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) is not rul­ing out that the break-in at their San Fer­nan­do head­quar­ters on Sunday was or­ches­trat­ed by their po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents.

The in­ci­dent comes on the heels of claims by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that on two oc­ca­sions be­fore the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion con­tract killers were of­fered the job to kill him but they both re­fused. Row­ley al­so claimed that re­cent threats were made to kill At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi.

MSJ’s pres­i­dent David Ab­du­lah, chair­man Gre­go­ry Fer­nan­dez and their lo­cal gov­ern­ment can­di­date Kizzy Mon­segue said they re­alised the build­ing had been bro­ken in­to when they ar­rived at their Lord Street of­fice for their 1.30 press con­fer­ence.

En­try was gained by break­ing a win­dow in the front of­fice. Fer­nan­dez said, “I don’t want to spec­u­late (about the mo­tive). We are hop­ing it is not part of the at­tacks we are see­ing on MSJ now. We are in the elec­tion sea­son and it may be part of the cam­paign against the MSJ.”

Hope­ful that that po­lit­i­cal mis­chief was not the mo­tive, he said, “It would send a very bad sig­nal at the start of this elec­tion cam­paign.”

Up­on open­ing the door, he said they recog­nised that the place was dis­turbed and called out be­cause they thought some­one was still in­side the build­ing. They got no re­sponse.

“Then we went in­to a cou­ple of the of­fices, in­clud­ing his (Ab­du­lah) and it was dis­turbed, draw­ers were ran­sacked.”

They im­me­di­ate­ly called the po­lice. They were wait­ing for the po­lice to com­plete their crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tions be­fore in­ves­ti­gat­ing if any­thing was stolen. Fer­nan­dez said they do not con­duct fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions at the of­fice. The open draw­ers con­tained par­ty doc­u­ments and poli­cies.

Re­spond­ing to ac­cu­sa­tions by Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal that there were un­der­hand deals re­gard­ing OW­TU’s Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd ac­qui­si­tion of the Guaracara Re­fin­ery Com­pa­ny, Ab­du­lah said Mooni­lal was seek­ing re­venge against him and the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union.

Ab­du­lah said Mooni­lal was feel­ing mis­er­able and try­ing to tar­nish his name for walk­ing away from the “cor­rup­tion of the Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment” and help­ing to re­move them from pow­er.

He said the MSJ was about trans­form­ing gov­er­nance in T&T so that the aims of the pre­am­ble to the Con­sti­tu­tion of T&T can be achieved.