Richard Lord

For­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning says no­body is above the scruti­ny of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in T&T. He said this dur­ing a news con­fer­ence in the Par­lia­ment build­ing yes­ter­day in re­sponse to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's dis­clo­sure of pub­lic of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, politi­cians, jour­nal­ists and trade union­ists, whose phones were tapped by the Strate­gic In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA).

He said: "I nev­er asked whom do you mon­i­tor or not mon­i­tor. They con­duct their busi­ness and if in the con­duct of their busi­ness they see a need to mon­i­tor in­di­vid­u­als, they do that. "The pa­ra­me­ter we set is that you are not au­tho­rised to mon­i­tor any­body who is a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen," Man­ning added: "If in the course of the work of in­tel­li­gence agen­cies they come up on the as­so­ci­a­tion of in­di­vid­u­als who are up-stand­ing cit­i­zens in the coun­try, as­so­ci­a­tions that are of con­cern to them, they have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate it. "It be­comes then, not a mat­ter of who you are, but a mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty."

Man­ning stressed: "And in those cir­cum­stances no­body is above the law. No­body is above the scruti­ny of the State when it comes to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters, whether you be Prime Min­is­ter, min­is­ter, judge, jour­nal­ist or any­body else... no­body is above the scruti­ny of the State." He stressed his Gov­ern­ment "nev­er sanc­tioned the il­le­gal in­ter­ven­tion of the State or any of its agen­cies in the pri­vate af­fairs of pri­vate cit­i­zens. "We nev­er did that. We set the pa­ra­me­ters with­in which they should op­er­ate and they con­duct­ed their busi­ness." He said the in­tel­li­gence agen­cies were nev­er asked to re­veal their sources of their in­for­ma­tion. "It is im­prop­er to do that," he said.

Man­ning said the SIA re­port­ed to him in his ca­pac­i­ty as Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. He said it was fund­ed by the na­tion­al bud­get. Man­ning said the amount of cash re­tained by the agency was noth­ing un­usu­al as the po­lice would have to pay in­for­mants and do oth­er things in the dis­charge of their work. Man­ning said the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to in­tro­duce the agency and ob­serve its ef­fec­tive­ness be­fore bring­ing the re­quired leg­is­la­tion for ap­proval. Man­ning, who is the MP for San Fer­nan­do East, said he called the news con­fer­ence be­cause he was de­nied an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ask Speak­er Wade Mark to seek the ap­proval of the House to waive the Stand­ing Or­ders to al­low him to re­spond to the PMs state­ment in Par­lia­ment.

He claimed the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment was "sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­man­tling the in­sti­tu­tions of the State that are in­volved in the an­ti-drug ef­fort." Not­ing that the il­le­gal drug trade was the ma­jor prob­lem af­fect­ing the coun­try, Man­ning said the SIA was do­ing a good job in that fight. He said: "If we didn't have the SIA and Sautt, God help us as to where this coun­try would have been now. The sit­u­a­tion would have been im­mea­sur­ably worse that it is to­day. "The Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing this coun­try down a road where the nar­co deal­ers will have a ma­jor say in the con­duct of the State's busi­ness." Man­ning said he has been wait­ing to make a con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment on that mat­ter "and the Gov­ern­ment knows it and that is why the Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing sure that I don't speak."