Cherisse Moe

Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Dr Amery Browne says he is con­cerned about the lat­est de­vel­op­ment in the al­leged plot against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and three mem­bers of her Cab­i­net in which an Is­lam­ic leader has been ques­tioned and de­tained. The man is a Princes Town res­i­dent and ed­u­ca­tor. Dr Browne ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of cast­ing "neb­u­lous as­per­sions on mem­bers of the Is­lam­ic com­mu­ni­ty" and hurt­ing the im­age of T&T. He said the more ap­pro­pri­ate way to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion was to pro­ceed with "qui­et in­ves­ti­ga­tions and threat man­age­ment." He added: "The Gov­ern­ment was so anx­ious to ex­tract sym­pa­thy from the po­ten­tial threats that they did not prop­er­ly think through the im­pli­ca­tions of their poor pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the mat­ter."

At last Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence, the Prime Min­is­ter con­firmed that she and three mem­bers of her Cab­i­net were the sub­jects of an as­sas­si­na­tion plot, which she de­scribed as an "evil, de­vi­ous act of trea­son". Re­ports are a po­lice sergeant and two for­mer mem­bers of the De­fence Force, are among sus­pects who are in po­lice cus­tody in con­nec­tion with the plot. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Brigadier John Sandy, who fi­nal­ly broke his si­lence on the con­tro­ver­sial is­sue on Sat­ur­day, is re­port­ed to have said the plot "is re­al." How­ev­er, Dr Brown is not con­vinced. In an in­ter­view, yes­ter­day, the op­po­si­tion MP ques­tioned the mo­tives of Per­sad-Bisses­sar and claimed she was us­ing the sit­u­a­tion to dis­tract the pub­lic from the "re­al is­sues."

"The Gov­ern­ment hopes that by cre­at­ing max­i­mum sen­sa­tion from this they would dis­tract the pop­u­la­tion from their non-ac­tion on Jack; their bro­ken promis­es on crime, traf­fic, and flood­ing; the mirac­u­lous changes in for­tunes of Ish and Steve; their in­abil­i­ty to stim­u­late the econ­o­my; their fail­ure to pro­vide text­books to the chil­dren; the per­se­cu­tion of a school prin­ci­pal and the ob­vi­ous in­com­pe­tence that have char­ac­terised this UNC/COP ca­bal." Browne said it was not a co­in­ci­dence that the al­leged plot was "trum­pet­ed to the pub­lic" on the same day that the dead­line ex­pired for At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan "to file an ap­peal in the Ish and Steve case" and right af­ter a trade union leader de­clared that the move­ment would be seek­ing to "kick the PP out of of­fice."

Browne added: "No threat against any cit­i­zen should be tak­en light­ly, but the PR-heavy ap­proach tak­en by this Gov­ern­ment is at vari­ance with what is done even in the USA when threats are de­tect­ed against Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma. "This is the modus operan­di of this Gov­ern­ment: week­ly po­lit­i­cal dis­trac­tions and PR gim­micks. They fooled the pop­u­la­tion on May 24 2010, but they should not con­tin­ue to take our cit­i­zens for fools," he said.

Busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty adopt­ing a wait and see ap­proach

Pe­ter Kan­hai, Pres­i­dent of the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, said while it is too ear­ly to de­ter­mine whether the al­leged plot, which made head­line news across the world, would neg­a­tive­ly af­fect the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, he is adopt­ing a wait-and-see ap­proach. "I do not fore­see any neg­a­tive ef­fects in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture but we will have to mon­i­tor and see what the ef­fects will be in the medi­um to long-term ba­sis."

Kan­hai said more needs to be done to ad­dress ris­ing crime, which he said re­mained the num­ber one is­sue af­fect­ing the coun­try. The To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce said the sit­u­a­tion did not auger well for To­ba­go which is still grap­pling with the ef­fects of the glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn.

Mem­ber and for­mer vice chair­man of the Cham­ber, Ri­car­do Hug­gins, said the Gov­ern­ment needs to "re­tain the con­fi­dence" of for­eign in­vestors and prove that they had "full con­trol" of T&T's se­cu­ri­ty is­sues. He al­so called on the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to work hard­er to pro­mote the is­land in a more pos­i­tive light.