Renu­ka Singh

Hous­ing Min­is­ter and Leader of Gov­ern­ment busi­ness, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, has in­creased his In­ter­net se­cu­ri­ty to stop hack­ers from ac­cess­ing pri­vate and sen­si­tive e-mails.With­in a mat­ter of days, a leaked au­dio record­ing of a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter de­scrib­ing Cab­i­net col­leagues as "rats" and an e-mail cor­re­spon­dence de­tail­ing po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy both sur­faced in the pub­lic do­main.Mooni­lal does not think those two in­ci­dents are iso­lat­ed, but rather ev­i­dence of Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-led "Nazi-type po­lit­i­cal tac­tics."

"It dis­turbs me that a min­is­ter can­not even of­fer a crit­i­cal view in pri­vate with­out Gestapo in­ter­cep­tion by the PNM," Mooni­lal said in an e-mail ex­change with the Sun­day Guardian.He said in­sult­ing re­marks made on the au­dio record­ing were al­ready sort­ed out and "put to rest."He said the PNM in­fil­tra­tion of pri­vate e-mails was trig­ger­ing a "na­tion­al hys­te­ria" and was a sign of the Op­po­si­tion's des­per­a­tion.

"It is a hunger for pow­er at all cost. But the cre­ation of this Gestapo so­ci­ety pos­es a threat to our democ­ra­cy and lib­er­al val­ues. The PNM op­er­a­tives are back to the bad old days of pre-2010," he said.Mooni­lal al­so de­scribed high-tech changes at the min­istry de­signed to keep out tech savvy hack­ers. He said he has spo­ken to both his lo­cal IT ex­perts and a spe­cial­ist cy­ber-crime unit out of the Unit­ed States.

"I do in­tend to strength­en fire­wall ca­pac­i­ty and use si­mul­ta­ne­ous lock­ing de­vices and 'white list' ap­pli­ca­tions to stop such fur­ther at­tacks," he said."In a bid to keep the PNM and Row­ley from get­ting their paws on my con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion which in­cludes na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­for­ma­tion, I have al­so or­dered new state-of-the-art soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tions for virus bar­ri­ers that Row­ley may have used," he said.Mooni­lal said if all else fails, he may have to trust lo­cal mail car­ri­er, TTPost, with his im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion.

E-mail ex­change

The e-mails ex­changed be­tween Mooni­lal and Gov­ern­ment sup­port­er and so­cial blog­ger Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der de­tailed plans to un­der­mine Row­ley and the PNM.Alexan­der was al­so part of the Round­table dis­cus­sions with Row­ley, Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah and trade union leader An­cel Ro­get in the days lead­ing up to the Sec­tion 34 march in No­vem­ber 2012.

How­ev­er, he fell out with the Round­table group when a de­mand made by him and De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Na­tion­al As­sem­bly founder Kirk Meighoo that the three lead­ers form a coali­tion against the Gov­ern­ment was dis­missed; Alexan­der then part­ed ways with the in­for­mal group­ing.Be­fore his close ties with the Gov­ern­ment, Alexan­der was al­so a fix­ture at en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh's three-week hunger strike in De­cem­ber 2012.Alexan­der is now a po­lit­i­cal strate­gist for the Gov­ern­ment.

Charles re­sponds

A me­dia re­lease was is­sued late Fri­day night on a UNC let­ter­head con­tain­ing Charles' re­sponse to the in­for­ma­tion leak:

"It is clear that the PNM con­tin­ues to avoid enun­ci­at­ing poli­cies, plans or a vi­sion that will ben­e­fit the peo­ple of T&T and im­prove the qual­i­ty of their lives. In­stead of pro­vid­ing al­ter­na­tive pol­i­cy op­tions that deal with pover­ty, crime, cre­at­ing well-pay­ing jobs, and re­duc­ing our high food im­port bill, the PNM con­tin­ues to ma­jor in mi­nors.

It is my hope that the PNM will, on their plat­forms, ar­tic­u­late for­ward look­ing poli­cies, so that we can en­ter in­to a rea­soned de­bate which will al­low vot­ers a clear choice. Our in­ten­tion is to make sure vot­ers are in­formed about Kei­th Row­ley, his lack of vi­sion, and his his­to­ry of non per­for­mance."