Yvonne Ba­boolal

If the 16 peo­ple who are de­tained for al­leged­ly plot­ting to as­sas­si­nate Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and three of her cab­i­net min­is­ters are re­leased to­day, the back­lash could fall on the Gov­ern­ment and po­lice in­tel­li­gence. So said po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath yes­ter­day in re­sponse to ques­tions on the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment if the 16 were re­leased with­out charge. Held un­der de­ten­tion or­ders, they would have to be freed when the state of emer­gency is lift­ed at mid­night to­day if they have not been charged with any­thing. "The back­lash will fall, to some ex­tent, on the Gov­ern­ment and, more im­por­tant­ly, to in­tel­li­gence," Ra­goonath said.

"The Gov­ern­ment and the po­lice will come out with egg on their faces. "There will be some de­gree of em­bar­rass­ment for the Gov­ern­ment. "The ex­tent of the em­bar­rass­ment will de­pend on how much the Gov­ern­ment takes and how much they put on the po­lice." The po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist re­called that dur­ing a re­cent ses­sion of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, a wit­ness said in­for­ma­tion that some­thing was im­mi­nent was passed on to the then gov­ern­ment, which ig­nored it. He said the Gov­ern­ment's spin doc­tors (PR peo­ple) could use that to rea­son that the Prime Min­is­ter had to act on a re­port of an as­sas­si­na­tion plot brought to her.

"I have heard the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter say­ing that the re­port of the plot came from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice who brought the in­tel­li­gence to him," Ra­goonath said. "This clear­ly sug­gests that the po­lice have some ques­tions to an­swer if no ev­i­dence is found to charge the 16." He said, how­ev­er, if there's any truth in the ini­tial re­port, he would ex­pect the se­cu­ri­ty forces to con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the them and ar­rest them again if they find suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence. Ra­goonath shied away from com­ment­ing on the se­cu­ri­ty eval­u­a­tion re­port Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley found in his mail­box, dis­miss­ing the plot as high­ly spec­u­la­tive. The re­port, parts of which were car­ried in a dai­ly news­pa­per yes­ter­day, had no source. Ra­goonath said: "I don't want to com­ment on the re­port be­cause I don't know the source, who com­piled it, whether it has any se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns."