Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) di­rec­tor re­tired ma­jor Roger Best is throw­ing his sup­port be­hind the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in the up­com­ing elec­tion.

Best who was among sev­er­al peo­ple fired from the SSA last year fol­low­ing an al­leged na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat was seen wear­ing a UNC jer­sey, sport­ing a beard and sit­ting next to in­cum­bent Barataira/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein, at the UNC Gen­er­al Elec­tion com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing in Debe Tues­day night.

Dur­ing his ad­dress,  Oropouche East MP Dr Rood­lal Mooni­lal ac­knowl­edged Best's pres­ence. 

As­sur­ing the na­tion that a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment would put an end to home in­va­sions, he said, "We have Roger Alexan­der with us. We have Mr Du­lalchan with us. Dis­tin­guished of­fi­cers Mr John­ny Abra­ham, and Ma­jor Best. We now have the man­pow­er. We have the ca­pac­i­ty. We have the ex­per­tise to deal with crime. We have it. Don't be fooled."

Adding that the ma­jor­i­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers in the coun­try want change, he said the UNC stands in sup­port of the po­lice ser­vice and law en­force­ment.  

"When we get back in there we will de­politi­cize the law en­force­ment ser­vices and the in­tel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ties " pledged Mooni­lal, who claimed that the gov­ern­ment has made the po­lice ser­vice a weapon against the Op­po­si­tion.

"They have made the in­tel­li­gence com­mit­tee, their play­thing to spy on us," said Mooni­lal who claimed that he be­lieved his phone was re­cent­ly tapped.  

He claimed his phone was charged to full ca­pac­i­ty, but he re­ceived a phone call and then his phone went blank.

"That is a dan­ger­ous thing be­cause when they are spy­ing on you and they are re­triev­ing in­for­ma­tion, copy­ing from your phone, they take your phone off so you can­not use it. That is the PNM style."

Guardian Me­dia's at­tempts to con­tact UNC chair­man Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and Mooni­lal about Best's ap­pear­ance at the meet­ing were un­suc­cess­ful.

Mean­while, in­cum­bent Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh who was present dur­ing the meet­ing was praised by his col­leagues, af­ter he was re­placed by in­cum­bent Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath as the prospec­tive can­di­date for the area. 

On Tues­day, he said he was called to a meet­ing on Sun­day and told about the par­ty's de­ci­sion, but he pledged his loy­al­ty to the UNC de­spite the de­vel­op­ment. 

Dur­ing his ad­dress, In­dars­ingh said pol­i­tics was not for the faint-heart­ed. 

"As I leave you here tonight, I want to tell you pol­i­tics is not about the faint-heart­ed. Pol­i­tics is about those who are com­mit­ted to a prin­ci­ple, a cause, who un­der­stand a phi­los­o­phy, who un­der­stands what it means to be in a par­ty that has had its roots on be­half of all the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go."