Kevon Felmine

In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) chair­man Rekha Ramjit is call­ing for per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty for all can­di­dates con­test­ing the Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tions af­ter the par­ty's can­di­date for Fyz­abad, Fa­bi­en Assie, dis­cov­ered an en­ve­lope with bul­lets at his of­fice on Sat­ur­day.Say­ing it was a sign of des­per­a­tion, hooli­gan­ism and thug­gery, Ramjit said yes­ter­day she ex­pects fur­ther in­ci­dents be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 7 poll date, as the ILP has been gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty.

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ce­cil San­tana yes­ter­day con­firmed that Fyz­abad po­lice, led by Supt Jim­my Pal­loo, went to Assie's of­fice around 5 pm to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter.A re­port stat­ed that the brown en­ve­lope con­tain­ing two bul­lets was slipped un­der the door to Assie's of­fice. Writ­ten on it was, "This is for Fyz­abad can­di­date Fa­bi­en Assie."

Of­fi­cers took the bul­lets for analy­sis while Cpl Haynes is car­ry­ing out in­quiries.Speak­ing by phone yes­ter­day, Ramjit said, "My un­der­stand­ing is that he came in­to his of­fice and found an en­ve­lope ad­dressed to him. When he opened it there were two bul­lets and a mes­sage that it was for him."He called in the po­lice and I, my­self, spoke with po­lice of­fi­cer Haynes and they are do­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tion. We don't know who de­liv­er­ered it, we are not go­ing to say who we think it is, but it was de­liv­ered.

She added, "Ob­vi­ous­ly it is re­lat­ed to the elec­tion. It is the start of thug­gery and hooli­gan­ism as it re­lates to the elec­tion. We don't know who it is from, whether it is from the PNM or the UNC, but ob­vi­ous­ly some­body wants to un­der­mine the cam­paign of Mr Fa­bi­en Assie be­cause the ILP is grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty."

Ramjit said they were con­fi­dent the po­lice would probe the mat­ter thor­ough­ly."The CSI of­fi­cers are do­ing what they need to do and we have con­fi­dence that the jus­tice sys­tem will deal with it ap­pro­pri­ate­ly. How­ev­er, per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty is a ma­jor is­sue. It is one that for­mer min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, Mr Gary Grif­fith, said that we should pay spe­cial at­ten­tion to," she said.

"I be­lieve that se­cu­ri­ty for all the can­di­dates is a must in this elec­tion. It al­so in­di­cates that there is des­per­a­tion among the po­lit­i­cal par­ties for the elec­tion. We ex­pect this in­ci­dent to be re­peat­ed in the fu­ture."She said the in­ci­dent had been trau­mat­ic for Assie, who went to the Gulf View Med­ical Cen­tre on Sat­ur­day night af­ter suf­fer­ing a bout of hy­per­ten­sion and chest pain. In a brief phone call yes­ter­day, Assie said he was still at the med­ical cen­tre where his heart was be­ing mon­i­tored.

Be­cause of his con­di­tion, he was un­able to re­call Sat­ur­day's event.Mean­while, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Mar­lene Coudray dis­missed the claim that her par­ty was in­volved.She said, "Why would any­body want to do that against the ILP at this stage? That is not our modus operan­di in the UNC, and since they keep­ing so much com­pa­ny with the PNM they should check them."