Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has firm­ly re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that it is in­struct­ing the po­lice to go af­ter crit­ics, in­sist­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) must be al­lowed to con­duct its work in­de­pen­dent­ly, as busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve re­main un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Re­spond­ing to claims by Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader San­jiv Bood­hu that the de­ten­tion of the Hadeeds had cre­at­ed the per­cep­tion that the Gov­ern­ment was weapon­is­ing the po­lice against de­trac­tors, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath yes­ter­day dis­missed the al­le­ga­tions as po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

The ar­rests came weeks af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie stat­ed that Gov­ern­ment was go­ing af­ter the “one per cent,” a term used to de­scribe the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency re­cent­ly, fu­elling Bood­hu’s claim that the Gov­ern­ment may have in­flu­enced the TTPS probe.

Padarath, how­ev­er, rub­bished the sug­ges­tion.

“The UNC is not in the pock­ets of the one per cent or any oth­er group, un­like the PNM,” Padarath said.

“Bood­hu’s state­ments are ridicu­lous. He is look­ing for some sort of po­lit­i­cal rel­e­vance. The UNC re­spects the in­de­pen­dent work of the TTPS and the rule of law. We have no in­volve­ment in any po­lice mat­ter.”

The Hadeeds were de­tained by po­lice on Wednes­day, af­ter of­fi­cers searched the cou­ple’s West­moor­ings home and seized elec­tron­ic de­vices and oth­er items re­lat­ed to the probe, as well as the fam­i­ly’s Blue Wa­ters Lim­it­ed com­plex in Tacarigua.

Po­lice al­so ar­rest­ed an­oth­er busi­ness­woman on Thurs­day and have in­di­cat­ed she is as­sist­ing them with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The TTPS has still not pub­licly dis­closed de­tails of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and up to yes­ter­day, nei­ther Hadeed nor his wife had been charged with any of­fence.

Mean­while, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der al­so urged the pub­lic to al­low in­ves­ti­ga­tors to do their work and cau­tioned against pre­judg­ing the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Al­though Alexan­der was not asked to re­spond di­rect­ly to Bood­hu’s re­marks, he was ques­tioned by re­porters about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volv­ing Hadeed and stressed that due process must be re­spect­ed.

“Al­though I’m the line man­ag­er for the TTPS, I of­ten give the TTPS an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do their job,” Alexan­der said.

“I want to en­cour­age that now. I want to en­cour­age that, as I did a cou­ple of months ago when this con­ver­sa­tion was in the pub­lic do­main, I would af­ford them (TTPS) that op­por­tu­ni­ty to do their job. Let’s wait for the out­come.”

Alexan­der not­ed that even af­ter po­lice con­clude their in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the ju­di­cial process re­mains the ul­ti­mate ar­biter.

“When we get that out­come, there’s still an­oth­er process. We have to go to court. Let us re­spect the rule of law,” he said.

He ar­gued that too many peo­ple were at­tempt­ing to in­flu­ence or pre­judge crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions be­fore they reached the courts.

“We have lost that re­spect for the rule of law. When we are telling, in some cas­es, the DPP (Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions) what to do, and we are telling the po­lice how to do their job, no. Do your job. We wait for the out­come.”

Alexan­der al­so crit­i­cised what he de­scribed as tri­al by pub­lic opin­ion, say­ing com­men­tary on so­cial me­dia and else­where of­ten out­paced the facts.

“The last place is a court of law, whether you’re guilty or in­no­cent,” Alexan­der said.

“The court of pub­lic opin­ion is what you feel. I feel and I feel, and a lot of state­ments have been made.”

Re­fer­ring to spec­u­la­tion cir­cu­lat­ing on­line, Alexan­der added, “I saw yes­ter­day I’m writ­ing PDOs (Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der) for peo­ple I don’t even know, but that’s al­right. That’s what so­cial me­dia does. That’s what some of the me­dia does.”

He said he re­mained con­fi­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tors would car­ry out their du­ties pro­fes­sion­al­ly in the Hadeed case.

“This mat­ter is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the po­lice and I know, be­cause that is where I came from, they will do what they have to. And the out­come, we wait.”

Bood­hu: Is de­ten­tion linked
to tax crit­i­cism?

The min­is­ters’ com­ments came af­ter Bood­hu ques­tioned whether the re­cent de­ten­tion of the Hadeed cou­ple was con­nect­ed to the busi­ness­man’s pub­lic crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment’s tax­a­tion poli­cies.

Speak­ing at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment meet­ing at the Mara­bel­la Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Thurs­day night, Bood­hu said the se­quence of events sur­round­ing Hadeed’s de­ten­tion cre­at­ed a dan­ger­ous per­cep­tion that crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment could in­vite po­lice ac­tion.

“Cer­tain busi­ness­peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed,” Bood­hu said.

“This is short­ly af­ter the same per­son who’s been ar­rest­ed, now in cus­tody, crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s tax­a­tion pol­i­cy.

“He has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s tax­a­tion pol­i­cy and next thing you know, he’s jailed. Locked up.”

Hadeed had pub­licly crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters in March, ar­gu­ing that ex­ces­sive tax­a­tion and de­layed VAT re­funds were en­cour­ag­ing smug­gling while re­duc­ing rather than in­creas­ing State rev­enue.

Bood­hu, how­ev­er, ac­knowl­edged that he had no ev­i­dence of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In­stead, he ar­gued that the per­cep­tion alone was dam­ag­ing.

“The mes­sage that the pub­lic re­ceives is very, very sim­ple. It is dan­ger­ous to dis­agree with this UNC Gov­ern­ment,” he said.

He claimed that per­cep­tion ex­tend­ed be­yond politi­cians and busi­ness lead­ers.

“If you have a dif­fer­ent view, if you have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion, if you are a re­porter and you re­port some­thing that is dif­fer­ent to what they want you to re­port, it is dan­ger­ous for you,” Bood­hu told sup­port­ers.

“It is dan­ger­ous not to sup­port every­thing that they say or they do.”

While stop­ping short of ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of di­rect­ing the po­lice, Bood­hu said the pub­lic could eas­i­ly draw that con­clu­sion.

“The mes­sage that the pub­lic re­ceives is that the Gov­ern­ment is di­rect­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice,” he said.

“And let me be clear, I have no ev­i­dence that that is the case. But the per­cep­tion that the Gov­ern­ment builds in the minds of the pub­lic is very, very dan­ger­ous.”

Bood­hu warned that such per­cep­tions could un­der­mine con­fi­dence in the in­de­pen­dence of the TTPS.

“The per­cep­tion can nev­er be, should nev­er be, that the Cab­i­net is con­trol­ling or di­rect­ing the po­lice to do any­thing at all,” he said.

“Oth­er­wise, the Gov­ern­ment is set­ting up the po­lice to fail. They are set­ting up the po­lice to be mis­trust­ed by the peo­ple of this coun­try.”

He ar­gued that the Con­sti­tu­tion de­lib­er­ate­ly places op­er­a­tional polic­ing ex­clu­sive­ly in the hands of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Quot­ing Sec­tion 123A of the Con­sti­tu­tion, Bood­hu said de­ci­sions on in­ves­ti­ga­tions, ar­rests, the de­ploy­ment of of­fi­cers and the al­lo­ca­tion of in­ves­tiga­tive re­sources rest sole­ly with the Com­mis­sion­er.

“It is the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice that must de­cide whether to in­ves­ti­gate, who to in­ves­ti­gate, whether to ar­rest, how to al­lo­cate in­ves­tiga­tive man­pow­er and re­sources, how and when to de­ploy po­lice of­fi­cers,” he said.

“All of those things are un­der the sole re­mit and con­trol of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, not any po­lit­i­cal par­ty that tem­porar­i­ly oc­cu­pies the ma­jor­i­ty of the seats in Par­lia­ment.”

What the AG said

On June 12, dur­ing the de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the SoE, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus will now ex­tend to gangs, in­clud­ing those who de­scribe them­selves in per­cent­ages, such as the “one per cent.”

“An in­frac­tion of the law by the pow­er­ful and the one per cent is no dif­fer­ent from an in­frac­tion of the law by the poor lit­tle black youths in Mor­vant and Laven­tille. We are not here speak­ing to ac­tion tak­en by our al­lies in the north. We have no con­trol over that,” the AG said in ref­er­ence to cit­i­zens who had their visas re­voked by the US gov­ern­ment, some of whom he said had vis­it­ed him seek­ing help to get the mat­ter rec­ti­fied.

“What we do have con­trol over, is what our law en­force­ment tells us about some of the ac­tiv­i­ties of these per­sons. The time when they re­ceived the keys to the city and li­cence to mash up the place. That time is over.”

Je­re­mie stressed that pro­tec­tion no longer ex­ists for some peo­ple, as au­thor­i­ties would act against any­one found to be in­volved in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“To those per­sons among us who con­sid­er that their wealth al­lows them guar­an­tees from pros­e­cu­tion and from the at­ten­tion of law en­force­ment bod­ies, we say those days are be­hind us. If you be­have as gang mem­bers do, you shall be treat­ed in ex­act­ly the same way that blue-col­lar gang mem­bers are. If your des­ig­na­tion hap­pens to be with­in the one per cent, it hap­pens to be six, sev­en, or eight, Teteron (prison) awaits.”