Gail Alexan­der

Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley wants the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to probe e-mails pur­port­ed­ly bear­ing the names of front­line gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials who al­leged­ly want­ed to tap the DPP's phone af­ter the Sec­tion 34 furore.Row­ley al­so claimed the e-mails re­vealed moves to shift the DPP to the ju­di­cia­ry and fur­ther dis­cussed in­tend­ed in­tim­i­da­tion of a T&T Guardian re­porter who broke the Sec­tion 34 sto­ry last Sep­tem­ber.

The PNM leader al­leged the con­tents of the e-mails were all part of a con­spir­a­cy which was afoot among Gov­ern­ment's front­line mem­bers last Sep­tem­ber to deal with the heat­ed sit­u­a­tion the ad­min­is­tra­tion had to face when the Sec­tion 34 is­sue broke.Row­ley dropped the bomb­shells when he launched yes­ter­day's Par­lia­ment de­bate on his mo­tion of no con­fi­dence against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Gov­ern­ment.In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that she had writ­ten act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Stephen Williams, to start a probe in­to the claims.

Row­ley said he had re­ceived the pack­age of 31 e-mails on the Sec­tion 34 is­sue from a whistle­blow­er six months ago and had sent it to the Pres­i­dent.He gave the e-mail ad­dress­es as "kam­lapb1@gmail.com", "anan@gmail.com", "cap­tain­gary­grif­fith@hot­mail" and "su­ru­jram­bachan@hot­mail".Row­ley said the body of e-mails cov­ered 17 days in Sep­tem­ber 2012 when Gov­ern­ment was called up­on to an­swer on the Sec­tion 34 is­sue.He said the un­named whistle­blow­er was a source who want­ed the pub­lic to know about the sit­u­a­tion and the in­for­ma­tion in the e-mails "points to griev­ous wrong­do­ing on the part of of­fi­cials who had failed to an­swer ques­tions on the is­sue."

He cit­ed the ex­change of e-mails in that re­gard, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­tween the "kam­lapb1" ad­dress and the "anan" ad­dress. He al­so not­ed that a par­tic­u­lar tar­get of the e-mail dis­cus­sion was the DPP.Row­ley not­ed one Sep­tem­ber 10 e-mail at the height of the Sec­tion 34 furore, in which "taps" were be­ing sought for the DPP's phones and a Sep­tem­ber 11 e-mail which al­lud­ed to of­fer­ing the DPP a post in the ju­di­cia­ry and find­ing a re­place­ment for him.He said: "They had prob­lems with the DPP and it could on­ly be solved by him be­ing re­moved and bring­ing in a re­place­ment."

Row­ley al­so cit­ed how the own­ers of the e-mail ad­dress­es spoke about T&T Guardian re­porter Denyse Renne, who had writ­ten the Sep­tem­ber 9, 2012, sto­ry which broke the Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co, how up­set they were about that and what they want­ed to do as a re­sult.Af­ter those par­tic­u­lar e-mails a vi­cious slan­der­ous at­tack was launched against Renne on the In­ter­net."I leave you to come to the con­clu­sions where there was any con­nec­tion be­tween the in­tent and the in­struc­tions in those e-mails," he said.Row­ley added: "This pack­age of e-mails points to high crimes in the of­fice of T&T. This mat­ter, be­cause of the na­ture of it, re­quires the ur­gent at­ten­tion on the part of T&T be­cause the one thing we can­not do is take the Gov­ern­ment's word."

No Con­fi­dence 2013-05-20

He said it may be that the prop­er ex­am­i­na­tion of the e-mails would show that the man­date the Gov­ern­ment re­ceived in May 2010 was sold for fi­nan­cial gains and the Gov­ern­ment "was in the em­ploy of peo­ple who used the Gov­ern­ment's man­date to pro­tect them­selves from courts lo­cal­ly and abroad."Row­ley al­so called on the DPP to ex­am­ine what was said in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day and called on the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to dis­charge its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to over­see the con­duct of pub­lic of­fi­cers.In the ab­sence of an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, Row­ley called on the Pres­i­dent to en­sure that body was ap­point­ed swift­ly.Not­ing the com­ments made in the e-mails about Renne, for in­stance, Row­ley said that was a har­bin­ger of "ter­ri­ble things " and was how the mafiosi spoke when they met to dis­cuss "peo­ple who were in their way."

Not­ing one Sep­tem­ber 8 e-mail which spoke of call­ing a meet­ing, Row­ley said the Prime Min­is­ter did in­deed hold a spe­cial Cab­i­net meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 10 on Sec­tion 34."That Sep­tem­ber 8 e-mail seems to have been a har­bin­ger of things to come. I leave you to draw your own con­clu­sions," he added.He al­so not­ed a Sep­tem­ber 19 e-mail on ad­vice to fire for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney, who was fired in con­nec­tion with Sec­tion 34 on Sep­tem­ber 21.Row­ley sev­er­al times re­ferred to for­mer US pres­i­dent Richard Nixon and the Wa­ter­gate is­sue, say­ing the same thing had hap­pened there. There was large­ly dead si­lence on the PP side as Row­ley spoke. AG Ram­lo­gan took notes as the PNM leader talked.Be­fore Row­ley con­clud­ed, House Leader Roodal Mooni­lal asked to see copies of the e-mails. Mooni­lal lat­er went over to the AG's desk to con­fer with him.When Ram­lo­gan was re­ply­ing, PP back­bencher Her­bert Vol­ney got up and left.Mooni­lal yes­ter­day said de­bate would last four days, pos­si­bly end­ing Thurs­day.