For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the courts have “em­bar­rassed” the Gov­ern­ment in­to tem­porar­i­ly pulling back from what he de­scribed as an abuse of State of Emer­gency (SoE) pow­ers, but warns that the ad­min­is­tra­tion re­mains “a dan­ger to every cit­i­zen” de­spite the re­lease of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­voked the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) against the Hadeeds on Thurs­day, Row­ley yes­ter­day said the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion did not change what he be­lieves is a broad­er pat­tern of con­sti­tu­tion­al over­reach.

“The courts have em­bar­rassed them in­to tem­po­rary re­straint but they re­main a dan­ger to every cit­i­zen of this coun­try,” Row­ley said.

He ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of show­ing con­tempt for both the Con­sti­tu­tion and the pub­lic.

“This Gov­ern­ment is very dis­re­spect­ful to the pop­u­la­tion and our Con­sti­tu­tion,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, the ad­min­is­tra­tion has “de­vised a plan to wield naked, un­fet­tered pow­er in the most spite­ful and vin­dic­tive way, us­ing a run­ning se­ries of States of Emer­gency as a tool os­ten­si­bly for crime fight­ing but re­al­ly to at­tack the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion in­to fear and sub­mis­sion.”

Row­ley al­so al­leged that po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence had now un­der­mined con­fi­dence in law en­force­ment.

“The po­lice pow­ers have been co-opt­ed by the po­lit­i­cal ca­bal and this will com­plete the de­struc­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice, as they lose the last ves­tiges of con­fi­dence that the pop­u­la­tion might have re­tained for them,” he said.

His com­ments came af­ter Alexan­der re­voked the PDOs is­sued against the Hadeeds, say­ing their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was no longer pro­por­tion­ate while a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials con­tin­ues.

Alexan­der said his de­ci­sion fol­lowed con­sid­er­a­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion Re­view Tri­bunal’s rec­om­men­da­tion, le­gal and con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues sur­round­ing the de­ten­tion, med­ical ad­vice re­lat­ing to Do­minic Hadeed and the Privy Coun­cil’s re­fusal to ex­pe­dite the State’s ap­peal.

He main­tained that the crim­i­nal probe re­mains ac­tive and has ex­pand­ed in­to mul­ti­ple ju­ris­dic­tions in­volv­ing lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment agen­cies.

De­spite the re­vo­ca­tion of the PDOs, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to fun­da­men­tal­ly change its ap­proach.

“The rul­ing ca­bal must stop its ram­page and re­turn to gov­ern­ing the coun­try as it was elect­ed to do, aban­don­ing its wicked reign and fo­cus­ing on the needs of the peo­ple,” he said.

The for­mer prime min­is­ter al­so vowed that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment would con­tin­ue re­sist­ing what it sees as Gov­ern­ment over­reach.

“The PNM will ob­serve the law as we re­sist every wicked at­tempt to de­stroy our move­ment. We didn’t sur­vive and pros­per for 70 years by rolling over to every self-ap­point­ed tyrant,” Row­ley said.

“The PNM will re­spond in de­fence of the peo­ple’s in­ter­ests.”

The Hadeeds were de­tained un­der PDOs on June 24 as part of the State’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­leged as­sas­si­na­tion con­spir­a­cy. They were re­leased on Thurs­day af­ter al­most a month in cus­tody with­out charge.