Chief Secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Orville London has accused Minority Leader Ashworth Jack of using the issue of his seeing his Security Intelligence Agency (SIA) file as an "opportunity to glorify himself and use what was one of the challenging periods in the history of Trinidad and Tobago for his personal advancement." London recalled that the Minority Leader told a television talk show he had seen his file, then changed that to say he did not see his file. However, when confronted with a verbatim report Jack said it was not that he saw it, but that somebody told him his file was big and that it started in 2005.
The Chief Secretary noted at Thursday's post Executive Council media briefing that in a situation where the Prime Minister was now saying she did not see it, the Police Commissioner was saying he did not see the file, the National Security Minister was saying he doesn't know, Justice Minister was saying that two men came from Israel and destroyed the files, Tobagonians have to ask "who was it that saw the file to tell Mr Jack what was in the file." He added: "Or maybe the most important question of all � did Mr Jack ever see his file, or conversely did anybody ever tell Mr Jack anything about his file?
"And was Mr Jack more focused on 'gallerying' and posturing about this very serious and sensitive issue," London said. He asked: "If that is the case, what does that tell you about Mr Jack's personality and character, to actually use something like this? "This is the conclusion to which Tobago is fast coming–that Mr Jack never saw his file–that nobody ever told Mr Jack about his file, but what really happened is that Mr Jack saw this as an opportunity to glorify himself and use what was one of the challenging periods in the history of Trinidad and Tobago for his own personal advancement."
London said the positive aspect of that was that Tobagonians had an opportunity to look at that, which was a challenge that all countries face. "How do you deal with personal privacy and security issues. I think that it is painful but I think that at the end of day, we are going to come out of this with some kind of better idea as to how we balance these two very important issues," London said.
