Renu­ka Singh

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith is threat­en­ing to quit in the face of scathing press re­lease is­sued by Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath yes­ter­day ac­cused him of mak­ing false claims and com­pro­mis­ing the in­tegri­ty of Cab­i­net.Bharath was re­fer­ring to re­ports that Grif­fith claimed he was pres­sured by his Cab­i­net col­leagues not sup­port a crim­i­nal com­plaint by Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Di­rec­tor David West.

West claimed on Thurs­day that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan asked him (West) to with­draw his wit­ness state­ment in a defama­tion case be­tween Ram­lo­gan and Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley in ex­change for the PCA post.

Grif­fith is now threat­en­ing to ex­pose pri­vate de­tails of a meet­ing he and his wife, Con­gress of the Peo­ple chair­man, Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith were "sum­moned to" with Bharath and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress's cam­paign and ad­ver­tis­ing con­sul­tant Ernie Ross on Thurs­day in Wood­brook.In a sub­se­quent in­ter­view though, Bharath de­nied call­ing Dy­er-Grif­fith to any meet­ing and he al­so de­nied be­ing present at any meet­ing with Grif­fith, Dy­er-Grif­fith and Ross.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, a livid Grif­fith, who was at the Na­tion­al Panora­ma semi­fi­nals, at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, in Port-of-Spain, said that he was sur­prised that Bharath would be the first to say there was no Cab­i­net pres­sure on him to not sup­port West.Grif­fith al­so crit­i­cised Bharath, claim­ing that the move to dis­cred­it him was a "red her­ring" de­signed to push him out of of­fice.

"I do not need to sell my soul for a po­lit­i­cal seat and I am not beg­ging any­one to stay, I could walk out of the Gov­ern­ment to­mor­row with my head high," Grif­fith said.Grif­fith said Bharath nev­er con­tact­ed him be­fore is­su­ing that state­ment and was shocked that Bharath would make such damn­ing state­ments with­out ver­i­fy­ing whether he did in fact say that Cab­i­net was putting pres­sure on him not to sup­port West.

"It is sur­pris­ing and iron­ic that the Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the first to jump out and make those state­ments. It is iron­ic that he of all peo­ple would be say­ing that but you know what they say about peo­ple who protest too much," Grif­fith said.

He said it was "in­ter­est­ing" that Bharath would make such state­ments "as if he for­got" what played off be­tween the four of us at a meet­ing at Ross' of­fice on Thurs­day, af­ter news broke that Grif­fith was in fact main­tain­ing that he would re­main a wit­ness against Ram­lo­gan.

"The court of pub­lic opin­ion could judge me and I could keep my head high but I want Bharath to an­swer to the coun­try what he was do­ing up in Ernie Ross of­fice on Thurs­day and why they sum­moned me and Mrs Grif­fith to a meet­ing and what was said there," Grif­fith said."The Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion lacks the most ba­sic com­mon sense and man­ners if he can­not con­tact me be­fore mak­ing these state­ments," he said.

"Let them con­tin­ue, I have no in­ten­tion to lie to pro­tect any­one and I am not go­ing to be pres­sured to lie," Grif­fith said.De­spite Grif­fith's threats, it was Bharath who drew first blood yes­ter­day when he is­sued a me­dia state­ment say­ing that Grif­fith's word and ac­tions had "com­pro­mised the in­tegri­ty of Cab­i­net".

Cab­i­net con­fu­sion

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj said on Sat­ur­day that the en­tire Cab­i­net could be the sub­ject of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion if it proven that pres­sure had been ap­plied to Grif­fith to with­draw his state­ment in sup­port of West.The me­dia re­lease car­ried the head­line "Bharath: Grif­fith's claims 'false and with­out ba­sis' and went on to say that Grif­fith's claim that he was pres­sured by Cab­i­net was "COM­PLETE­LY false and with­out any ba­sis what­so­ev­er!"

"Any sug­ges­tion that such a re­quest was made of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter at the meet­ing of Cab­i­net last Thurs­day is com­plete­ly and ut­ter­ly false. The Cab­i­net nev­er, at any time, at­tempt­ed to do as Mr Grif­fith has claimed," the re­lease not­ed.

"In dis­miss­ing the claims, Min­is­ter Bharath added: "More than Mr Grif­fith's claims be­ing com­plete­ly un­true is the fact that he has, by his ac­tions, com­pro­mised the in­tegri­ty of Cab­i­net, and has done so with­out any clear or ra­tio­nal rea­son," Bharath's re­lease said.

"The irony of these claims are al­so very stark, when one con­sid­ers that it is this Gov­ern­ment that has done the most to not on­ly main­tain, but im­prove the process­es and mech­a­nisms that pro­mote ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in Gov­ern­ment," Bharath said.

AG to re­sign...Lal­la tipped for job

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is set to re­sign to­day and at­tor­ney Lar­ry Lal­la is ex­pect­ed to be sworn in.The Cab­i­net change will take place be­fore Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar makes her much an­tic­i­pat­ed an­nounce­ment at 4 pm.

Ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion, Cab­i­net must be made up of the Prime Min­is­ter and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, so once Ram­lo­gan steps down, Lal­la would have to be signed in im­me­di­ate­ly in or­der to up­hold the Con­sti­tu­tion­al de­scrip­tion of what con­sti­tutes a gov­ern­ment.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that Ram­lo­gan has not met with Per­sad-Bisses­sar but in­stead was al­lowed to send a state­ment to her fol­low­ing re­ports that Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) Di­rec­tor David West made a com­plaint to po­lice, ac­cus­ing Ram­lo­gan of at­tempt­ing to "per­vert the course of jus­tice" by ask­ing him to with­draw his wit­ness state­ment in a civ­il mat­ter filed by Ram­lo­gan against Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

The T&T Guardian was in­formed that Ram­lo­gan met with three lawyers on Thurs­day; his pri­vate lawyer Pamela El­der SC, Wayne Sturge and Ger­ald Ramdeen.While both Sturge and Ramdeen were spot­ted en­ter­ing Ram­lo­gan's of­fice on Thurs­day, El­der re­fused to com­ment on "any­thing con­cern­ing the AG", when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day.Key mem­bers of the Cab­i­net met at Per­sad-Bisses­sar's home in Phillpine, South Trinidad up un­til 4 am Sun­day morn­ing, sources said, but Ram­lo­gan was a no show.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that he spent the past three days in his gat­ed-com­mu­ni­ty Palmiste home with his fam­i­ly, dis­cussing his next step.The T&T Guardian was told that while Ram­lo­gan ap­peared crest-fall­en, he stands by his de­nial that he ever sought to bar­gain the PCA job as an in­duce­ment for West to with­draw his wit­ness state­ment in the defama­tion case with Row­ley.

"He has said that by the grace of God, he would prove this was a move dri­ven by hate and vengeance," the in­sid­er said.In a state­ment last Thurs­day, hours af­ter West made his re­port, Ram­lo­gan claimed the al­le­ga­tion was "part of a wider po­lit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy de­signed to dam­age the gov­ern­ment as we draw clos­er to elec­tions."

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, who has been iden­ti­fied as a wit­ness in West's com­plaint, when he claimed that Ram­lo­gan duped him in­to con­tact­ing West to fol­low up on whether the wit­ness had with­drawn the wit­ness state­ment as dis­cussed.Grif­fith had claimed that he did not know the con­tents of the doc­u­ment he was asked to fol­low up on with West.

Grif­fith said yes­ter­day that has been cleared by in­ves­ti­ga­tors and was not a sus­pect in any­way while the pro­vi­sions of PCA Act 2006 pro­tects West.Lal­la, the T&T Guardian learned has not yet been in­formed of the con­fir­ma­tion of the ap­point­ment but has sig­nalled to close friends that once ap­proached, he would ac­cept."He is not say­ing any­thing un­til the Prime Min­is­ter speaks be­cause he does not want to jump the gun," a close friend said.