Gail Alexan­der

Al­though Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) leader Prakash Ra­mad­har called his wife and wept on Mon­day af­ter the Kei­th Row­ley e-mails were re­vealed in Par­lia­ment, Ra­mad­har yes­ter­day said he was deeply en­cour­aged that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said the al­le­ga­tions in the e-mails were fab­ri­cat­ed.

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day's no-con­fi­dence mo­tion de­bate in Par­lia­ment, Ra­mad­har said he had been de­pressed and had spent a rest­less night on Mon­day af­ter PNM leader Row­ley's rev­e­la­tions of the e-mails and their al­leged con­tents.Ra­mad­har said af­ter this was re­vealed, he left the cham­ber, called his wife and wept.He said: "Not be­cause of any fear oth­er than what hap­pened in this House on Mon­day. If it is the al­le­ga­tions are true, it is of the most heinous and grave na­ture. If it is not, that is equal­ly heinous and grave."

He said T&T will nev­er be the same af­ter the rev­e­la­tion, since there will al­ways be those in so­ci­ety who will be di­vid­ed over this."Is this the cheap way we do things in T&T?" he asked of the Op­po­si­tion's move."The COP's po­si­tion is, we need to know what the truth is. We make no pro­nounce­ment. But I am deeply en­cour­aged when the Prime Min­is­ter made it very clear that all these al­le­ga­tions are fab­ri­ca­tions."

Ra­mad­har said if Row­ley be­lieved the e-mails were se­ri­ous, im­por­tant and re­al doc­u­ments, then he must have ap­pre­ci­at­ed im­me­di­ate­ly that they would have been ob­tained in breach of the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion 2010 law. He said ob­tain­ing such ma­te­r­i­al il­le­gal­ly car­ries a penal­ty of a $250,00 fine and three years' jail time.

Ra­mad­har said the al­le­ga­tions were most se­ri­ous, in­clud­ing con­spir­a­cy to mur­der a re­porter and an at­tack on the ju­di­cia­ry–the two pro­tec­tors of T&T's democ­ra­cy. He said if Row­ley had be­lieved the mat­ter to be true and had held it for six months–as Row­ley had said–then the PNM leader was guilty of not car­ry­ing out his du­ty to the peo­ple as a high pub­lic of­fi­cer."If it was kept in his bo­som or back pock­et or wher­ev­er and some harm had come to a mem­ber of the free press, what would he have done about that?" Ra­mad­har asked.

"If ac­tions had been tak­en to un­der­mine the ju­di­cia­ry, what would he have done as well?"Ra­mad­har said Row­ley had not said what he had done to in­ves­ti­gate the e-mails, which he de­scribed as "hor­rif­ic al­le­ga­tions."Query­ing the ba­sis for the e-mails, Ra­mad­har said if they were false, it would dam­age the psy­che of the pub­lic. He said the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion should mark a turn­ing point in how pol­i­tics was con­duct­ed in T&T.