Gail Alexan­der

Ac­cus­ing the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of hack­ing in­to his e-mail, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) deputy leader Roodal Mooni­lal says he's turn­ing over to his at­tor­neythe is­sue of cer­tain e-mails the PNM re­vealed on a San Juan plat­form on Thurs­day night.He made the com­ment yes­ter­day when re­porters asked if he was turn­ing it over to the po­lice. He not­ed that it is a crime to be in­volved in any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty to in­ter­cept tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions, e-mails, Black­ber­ry Mes­sages (BBMS) et cetera.

"I'll be re­fer­ring this mat­ter to my at­tor­ney and will take the ad­vice on it," Mooni­lal said.

At the San Juan pub­lic meet­ing on Thurs­day, the PNM's Camille Robin­son-Reg­is read out e-mails al­leged­ly to and from Mooni­lal's e-mail ad­dress.They in­clud­ed a pos­i­tive re­ply from that ad­dress to a pro­pos­al from UNC ac­tivist and busi­ness­man Phillip Alexan­der, who had pitched an idea for a show to raise Gov­ern­ment's pro­file on the state-owned TV sta­tion CN­MG.

Find out more: Click to read the leaked e-mails.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so read an­oth­er e-mail on a Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) cam­paign al­leged­ly in­volv­ing tar­get­ing PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.This was said to be from UNC cam­paign man­ag­er Rod­ney Charles to 17 peo­ple, in­clud­ing UNC of­fi­cials, min­is­ters, ac­tivists, two T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the UK and Cana­da, a Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­istry staff mem­ber, a for­mer Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) board mem­ber and a di­rec­tor of a Cana­di­an cam­paign man­age­ment and PR firm.

Asked about the e-mails al­leged­ly ex­changed be­tween him­self and Alexan­der, Mooni­lal said, "Any­one who has a pro­pos­al or plan on pol­i­tics or elec­tions, I in­vite them to dis­cuss with me. I say no more, no less, but it ap­pears my pri­vate e-mail is sub­ject to hack­ing by the PNM."

Mooni­lal said he re­ceives over 100 e-mails dai­ly to which he gives short replies.

"So I'd have re­ceived this (Alexan­der's e-mails) and asked him to dis­cuss with me any pro­pos­als or plan he has."

He added, "But we've de­vel­oped in­to a cy­ber-space Gestapo so­ci­ety where peo­ple can­not send e-mails, text mes­sages or BBMs with­out fear of be­ing in­ter­cept­ed.

"I'm ex­treme­ly dis­turbed the PNM in Op­po­si­tion has this ca­pac­i­ty to in­ter­cept e-mails and are in­volved in some type of hack­ing in­to com­put­er sys­tems that al­low them to have pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial e-mails sent to min­is­ters and cit­i­zens.

"It's a de­vel­op­ment that is ex­treme­ly fright­en­ing for the cit­i­zens that the Op­po­si­tion PNM can wave e-mails of a pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial mat­ter on po­lit­i­cal plat­forms. It means we're not safe to send com­mu­ni­ca­tions on any mat­ter on pol­i­tics or so­ci­ety."

Mooni­lal said Row­ley "should dis­as­so­ci­ate him­self from this at­tempt at hack­ing in­to the com­put­ers of state of­fi­cials and min­is­ters. He should in­di­cate clear­ly he's not as­so­ci­at­ed with this and knows no one as­so­ci­at­ed with this hack­ing."

"This isn't a sin­gu­lar mat­ter. Dr Row­ley came to Par­lia­ment with e-mails which he fab­ri­cat­ed. He left that to the po­lice," Mooni­lal added in ref­er­ence to the "E-mail­gate" scan­dal re­vealed in Par­lia­ment by Row­ley last May.He al­so ac­cused PNM sen­a­tor and pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Faris Al-Rawi of hav­ing "a doc­u­ment he clear­ly got from some­where. Now you have in­ter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion by those in Op­po­si­tion."

He said Alexan­der is a known blog­ger in the pub­lic space.