Ra­mona Ram­di­al

I heard a sound bite from Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les at their Mara­bel­la meet­ing last week.

He di­rect­ly ad­dressed his par­ty’s in­ter­nal di­vi­sions and the fac­tions that kept them dis­unit­ed be­hind “Pen­ny,” “Row­ley,” “Stu­art,” et al. They are pur­su­ing par­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty as they build to­wards next year’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

The cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment must be con­fi­dent that they had ut­ter­ly de­stroyed the PNM par­ty last year. Per­haps they can even an­tag­o­nise mem­bers of their own par­ty, at will.

I say this be­cause I was told that ju­nior Hous­ing Min­is­ter Anil Roberts at­tacked this col­umn dur­ing one of his re­cent vlogs. Min­is­ter Roberts was a PNM ad­vi­sor to then sports min­is­ter Roger Boynes un­der a PNM gov­ern­ment be­fore join­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship as a mem­ber of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple. I re­main a life­time mem­ber of the UNC.

Why didn’t Roberts at­tack the pro­cure­ment faults with­in the can­celled $3.4 bil­lion Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion con­tracts in­stead? This is an em­bar­rass­ment to the Prime Min­is­ter and the UNC.

Why would a sit­ting UNC min­is­ter at­tack a reg­u­lar par­ty mem­ber? Es­pe­cial­ly when I was the UNC elec­tions of­fi­cer who ap­proved his UNC mem­ber­ship when he hopped from the COP.

I have al­so heard that his vlog may be re­named “Roti and Cof­fee” soon. Why?

The Prime Min­is­ter said last week, “The Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and in­tel­li­gence agen­cies are al­so in­creas­ing their pres­ence in Trinidad to as­sist our crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives.”

A mere two days af­ter this an­nounce­ment, promi­nent busi­ness­man and own­er of Blue Wa­ters Ltd, Do­minic Hadeed, and his wife, Genevieve Hadeed, were de­tained by po­lice fol­low­ing search­es at the cou­ple’s West­moor­ings res­i­dence and their busi­ness place in Trinci­ty.

I no­ticed the TTPS and me­dia re­peat­ing that “the ex­e­cu­tion of a war­rant is a stan­dard in­ves­tiga­tive pro­ce­dure and does not con­sti­tute a find­ing of wrong­do­ing…” amongst oth­er state­ments which amount to “in­no­cent un­til proven guilty.” These facts ap­ply to all per­sons from all walks of life.

The need to ar­tic­u­late this in­for­ma­tion re­peat­ed­ly, un­der these cir­cum­stances, is in­ter­est­ing. Is there an ex­pec­ta­tion that the de­tained in­di­vid­u­als will re­spond with a heavy-pow­ered le­gal bat­tery? Their le­gal team so far in­cludes Gilbert Pe­tersen, SC and Faris Al-Rawi, SC.

For the sake of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, I hope that all ac­tions tak­en by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the State can be eas­i­ly de­fend­ed. Per­haps the State of Emer­gency will help to in­su­late those funds.

Mr Hadeed has been a close as­so­ciate of PNM Sen­a­tor Al-Rawi since be­fore 2006, and he has been seen over the years at sev­er­al so­cial events in the com­pa­ny of mem­bers of the pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ment.

I re­mem­ber the gen­tle­man dur­ing my years as min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources, as one of the bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­ers who was ve­he­ment­ly op­posed to our 2012 ver­sion of the Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill. Sen­a­tor Al-Rawi vo­cif­er­ous­ly de­cried it, ar­gu­ing that bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­ers should not have to pay for the col­lec­tion of the bev­er­age con­tain­ers for re­cy­cling.

The bill lapsed in the Sen­ate and nev­er re­turned. We still suf­fer from mas­sive flood­ing, wors­ened by mas­sive plas­tic bot­tle lit­ter in our wa­ter­ways and else­where.

Maybe this new Op­po­si­tion led by Pen­ne­lope Beck­les will now sup­port the bill, giv­en that the orig­i­nal ver­sion came from a Patrick Man­ning-led gov­ern­ment in which she was the min­is­ter of plan­ning!

An­oth­er promi­nent busi­ness­woman, Na­tal­ie Har­ford, the daugh­ter of the late Richard Har­ford, the founder of Mario’s Piz­za, was iden­ti­fied as a fi­nancier of the “Sev­en” or­gan­ised crime gang. She has been de­tained un­der a PDO since April.

Is she a “Big Fish” or is she in­no­cent?

Will these ar­rests have any im­pact on the brands as­so­ci­at­ed with these per­sons? Are there more ar­rests to come?

If these ac­tions send a mes­sage that “no one is above the law,” it is a good one. If they are ul­ti­mate­ly in­ef­fec­tu­al or if they back­fire, it will fur­ther dam­age our lan­guish­ing crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

As a na­tion, we should book­mark these ar­rests and track the progress over time. Is this a dis­trac­tion or a “pap­pyshow?” Does the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions have enough state pros­e­cu­tors and re­sources to pur­sue mat­ters of pub­lic in­ter­est to a just con­clu­sion? Will the TTPS fol­low all prop­er pro­ce­dures, de­tect ef­fec­tive­ly, and lay de­fen­si­ble charges? Will jus­tice be served with­out pro­ce­dur­al or tech­ni­cal chal­lenge?

Venezuela’s dev­as­tat­ing 7.2 and 7.5 earth­quakes have so far caused more than 1,400 deaths and 3,360 in­juries. An es­ti­mat­ed 50,000 re­main un­ac­count­ed. More than 70,000 homes were dam­aged, and many high-rise build­ings have been de­mol­ished.

Just as our clos­est neigh­bour was on its way to pick up the pieces in a post-Nico­las Maduro era, this tragedy in hu­man lives is al­so es­ti­mat­ed to cost Venezue­lans up to sev­en per cent of their na­tion­al GDP.

Our Prime Min­is­ter has pledged firm sup­port and com­pre­hen­sive hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid. Res­cue team per­son­nel, food, wa­ter, and med­i­cine are among the re­lief be­ing of­fered.

Will act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez ac­knowl­edge and ac­cept our of­fer, or will the mo­tive of the of­fer be ques­tioned?

In times of dis­as­ter and need, geopo­lit­i­cal pos­tur­ing should be eclipsed by hu­man­i­tar­i­an de­cen­cy. I hope that Venezuela ful­ly re­cov­ers soon and that our sup­port is ac­cept­ed in good faith.