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Sunday, May 4, 2025

Dillon admits PM was in dark about meeting with Pres

by

20160929

Pres­i­dent's House of­fi­cials had in­formed na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials that a pro­posed meet­ing be­tween Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona and Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon was "ba­si­cal­ly se­cu­ri­ty-re­lat­ed" and Dil­lon should bring his ad­vis­er to the meet­ing.

Dil­lon re­lat­ed that among the se­quence of events lead­ing to the meet­ing, in sup­port of Row­ley's ex­pla­na­tions re­gard­ing queries on the is­sue aris­ing from Car­mona's state­ments on Wednes­day.

Car­mona said Row­ley knew of the meet­ing with Dil­lon dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day.

But speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, Row­ley de­nied that as well as al­le­ga­tions he leaked doc­u­ments from Car­mona on the meet­ing to the press.

Dil­lon con­firmed he in­formed Row­ley of the meet­ing with the Pres­i­dent the day of the meet­ing. But Row­ley said his ad­vice to Dil­lon to "go and see what the Pres­i­dent want­ed," shouldn't have been seen as li­cence for the meet­ing, since he thought the Pres­i­dent's re­quest might have been about se­cu­ri­ty for his fam­i­ly or some­thing per­son­al.

Dil­lon said on Au­gust 26 his sec­re­tary was con­tact­ed by Car­mona's sec­re­tary re­quest­ing Dil­lon's pres­ence for an Au­gust 30 meet­ing.

He said his sec­re­tary in­di­cat­ed he wasn't avail­able then as he had a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing around the same time.

On Sep­tem­ber 2, Dil­lon said there was com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween Pres­i­dent's House and his sec­re­tary re­quest­ing the meet­ing be sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 5.

He said his sec­re­tary in­quired about the na­ture of the meet­ing and was told it was "ba­si­cal­ly se­cu­ri­ty-re­lat­ed." Dil­lon said his sec­re­tary was al­so told Dil­lon should bring his ad­vis­er to the meet­ing.

Dil­lon said on Sep­tem­ber 5 – the day of the meet­ing – he went to Row­ley's of­fice to see him but Row­ley wasn't avail­able.

Dil­lon said he called Row­ley on the phone and spoke to him, in­di­cat­ing he (Dil­lon) was re­quest­ed to have a meet­ing with the Pres­i­dent at 12.30 pm the same day.

Dil­lon said the PM was con­cerned about the na­ture of the meet­ing but Dil­lon said he in­di­cat­ed he wasn't aware of its na­ture. He said Row­ley told him to go ahead and "lis­ten to what the Pres­i­dent" had to say. Dil­lon then at­tend­ed the meet­ing.

Dil­lon said pri­or to that – over the pre­vi­ous week­end – he had in­di­cat­ed to the act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Chief of De­fence Staff that they should be pre­pared to at­tend the meet­ing with him.

He said the meet­ing last­ed about three hours and sev­er­al is­sues were dealt with. Dil­lon said the Pres­i­dent in­di­cat­ed too that he would send a copy of the notes of the meet­ing to Row­ley.

Dil­lon said it was cor­rect that the at­ten­dance of the min­is­ter's ad­vis­er, CoP and CDF were not known to Row­ley un­til the lat­ter read it in the press.

Row­ley, how­ev­er, said he did not feel Dil­lon did any­thing out of line. He said when he had asked Dil­lon what the sum­mon­ing (to the meet­ing) was about, he said he didn't know.

Row­ley said at the first op­por­tu­ni­ty (af­ter), Dil­lon gave him a writ­ten state­ment on the meet­ing. He had await­ed the min­is­ter's telling him of the event face-to-face – since Dil­lon was out of T&T af­ter the meet­ing – and in the mean­time Row­ley re­ceived doc­u­ments on the mat­ter from the Pres­i­dent.

"Then it be­came clear what had tran­spired and I then sought (se­nior coun­sel) ad­vice," the PM said.

Row­ley said he didn't know when he would be meet­ing the Pres­i­dent again, but would dis­charge his con­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (on this).


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