Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Trinidad and To­ba­go is head­ing down a path of de­struc­tion. The warn­ing is be­ing sound­ed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Arthur NR Robin­son, on the heels of the star­tling rev­e­la­tion of the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency's (SIA) unau­tho­rised wire tap­ping ser­vice.

Point­ing out clear­ly that while the na­tion's se­cu­ri­ty is of para­mount im­por­tance, Robin­son said the il­le­gal use of the sys­tem is tan­ta­mount to an abuse on the Con­sti­tu­tion.

A mis­take, the for­mer Pres­i­dent heed­ed way back in 1977, was des­tined to hap­pen if Gov­ern­ment failed to get a grip on the spi­ralling rise in cor­rup­tion at state agen­cies. In his book en­ti­tled Caribbean Man, Robin­son quot­ed from an ad­dress in Par­lia­ment where he stat­ed: "Cor­rup­tion must be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly."

Cit­ing four rea­sons for his state­ment, the for­mer Pres­i­dent stat­ed:

�2 It is a high­ly in­fec­tious dis­ease and it spreads through­out the so­ci­ety.

�2 It pro­duces in­ef­fi­cien­cy and dis­tor­tions in the econ­o­my and prej­u­dices healthy eco­nom­ic growth.

�2 It in­creas­es busi­ness and cost.

�2 It un­der­mines the sta­bil­i­ty of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ments.

Not­ing that his warn­ing had come to pass, Robin­son said: "It has all hap­pened. It has be­gun to do so. We are at the ini­tial stage where even the Head of State had to say we are in dan­ger of be­com­ing a failed State.

All the in­sti­tu­tions have come in­to dis­re­pute. It is in­fec­tious where those in au­thor­i­ty are in­volved, then it in­fects oth­ers. If those who are high­er up are get­ting away with cor­rup­tion, why can't we not ben­e­fit where we can. It was about cor­rup­tion then...and now it is about what has hap­pened in the re­cent past. It is the main rea­son why the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion lost the gen­er­al elec­tion."

De­scrib­ing the SIA fi­as­co as "very dis­turb­ing," Robin­son said it has raised sev­er­al ques­tions war­rant­i­ng an­swers. "The knowl­edge that this in­stru­ment has ex­ist­ed in the cir­cum­stances and the at­mos­phere which has pre­vailed has giv­en rise to sev­er­al dis­turb­ing ques­tions. For in­stance, whether the SIA would have been used for po­lit­i­cal use which would be quite wrong."

Wire-tap­ping dis­re­spects the Head of State

Ad­mit­ting that he was at a loss as to why the tele­phone of His Ex­cel­len­cy Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards had been wire tapped, Robin­son ques­tioned what use was made of the in­for­ma­tion ob­tained by the SIA. "I would not for one mo­ment con­sid­er tap­ping the tele­phone of the Head of State, but if it has hap­pened there must be a rea­son why. There must have been a pur­pose in so do­ing and clear­ly it was the pur­pose of know­ing what­ev­er has hap­pened or is hap­pen­ing around the Head of State. "What could that pur­pose be? I do know what is the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Head of State and the Prime Min­is­ter who, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, would be the clos­est per­son to the Head of State."

Un­der­min­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry

Point­ing out while the SIA would be vi­tal to place a dent on the ris­ing crime sit­u­a­tion, Robin­son al­so ex­pressed shock as to why judges were among the per­sons be­ing mon­i­tored. He said: "I can­not think of any le­git­i­mate rea­sons why the tele­phone of judges would be wire­tapped. I am ap­palled that judges would be in­volved and be the sub­ject of this kind of op­er­a­tion. That would go to the root of con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice. Such an in­stru­ment can be of great use to con­trol crim­i­nal be­hav­iour but not to as­so­ciate the Head of State with that type of be­hav­iour.

"What was the na­ture of the mat­ters be­ing se­cret­ly record­ed by this SIA? I am shocked that this has been done with­out the knowl­edge of per­sons who were be­ing record­ed. It was said that it was be­ing used as an in­stru­ment for the pur­pose of en­hanc­ing the se­cu­ri­ty of the na­tion. "The se­cu­ri­ty is im­por­tant and all ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures should be tak­en to have the se­cu­ri­ty en­hanced. How­ev­er, I am of the view that what­ev­er mea­sure is adopt­ed should be done in ac­cor­dance with the Con­sti­tu­tion and laws of the coun­try.

"It is my view if a per­son's pri­va­cy is vi­o­lat­ed with­out the knowl­edge of that per­son it is an in­fringe­ment of the per­son's pri­va­cy." Asked if he be­lieved the SIA would be able to avert a re­peat of the 1990 coup, Robin­son said: "If it is used con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly for the pur­pose of mon­i­tor­ing the move­ment and be­hav­iour of per­sons sus­pect­ed to be in­volved in plan­ning il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties it can be very use­ful in ex­pos­ing the be­hav­iour and plans.