Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar did noth­ing wrong when she re­vealed in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day that the phones of many promi­nent cit­i­zens were il­le­gal­ly tapped by the Strate­gic In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA). Row­ley com­ment­ed on the state­ment dur­ing a news con­fer­ence in the Par­lia­ment build­ing yes­ter­day. He said the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment was pre­pared to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment in ur­gent moves to ap­prove leg­is­la­tion to al­low for phone-tap­ping to be done un­der a sys­tem of ju­di­cial overview. "We will sup­port any such mea­sure and it is a pity that such mea­sures had not been in place be­fore be­cause it may have pro­tect­ed us from the shame that we face to­day," he added.

He said he was not sur­prised that his phone was among the many that were tapped. Row­ley stressed, how­ev­er, that the act was wrong be­cause it was not be­ing done un­der law. Row­ley said the SIA op­er­at­ed il­le­gal­ly un­der a for­mer UNC Gov­ern­ment, in which Per­sad-Bisses­sar was a mem­ber. He said the prob­lem now was not what the PNM or UNC Gov­ern­ment did. "What was painful was that of­fice­hold­ers could have been us­ing that ma­chin­ery of the State to vi­o­late the rights of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, That is un­ac­cept­able." he added. Row­ley said the PNM was "nev­er sent here (in Par­lia­ment) to break the law, to abuse the Con­sti­tu­tion or to car­ry out any per­son­al vendet­ta against any­body."

Row­ley said he dis­so­ci­at­ed the PNM "from in­di­vid­ual wrong­do­ing, in­di­vid­ual ex­cess­es and wrong­do­ing on the part of of­fice­hold­ers."

He stressed: "We have no in­ten­tions of de­fend­ing wrong­do­ing on the part of any in­di­vid­ual." Row­ley said the PNM should be left out of the mat­ter. He said he would be very sur­prised if the thou­sands of PNM mem­bers across the coun­try "had any in­ter­est in find­ing out what Ms Cox or my chil­dren or any­body has to do when the day comes and what they're say­ing on the phone. The PNM has no in­ter­est in that." Row­ley said the oath of of­fice should gov­ern the con­duct of in­di­vid­u­als. "The pri­va­cy and the right to be pri­vate is a fun­da­men­tal pil­lar in any de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety," he added.

He said he was sure the SIA was not on­ly in­volved in mon­i­tor­ing peo­ple. He said he was sure the agency was a use­ful one for this coun­try and there was need to pro­tect the agency. Row­ley said he was "un­com­fort­able" with the Ex­ec­u­tive treat­ing this mat­ter as dis­cov­ery. He said in ad­di­tion to ap­prov­ing leg­is­la­tion to le­galise the agency, a joint se­lect com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment should be es­tab­lished to op­er­ate in cam­era to deal with the mat­ter. Row­ley said the mat­ter was "very se­ri­ous" and "it has far-reach­ing con­se­quences. There is great un­ease across the coun­try as a re­sult of the con­fir­ma­tion of long stand­ing sus­pi­cion."