Richard Lord

Even though the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) Gov­ern­ment has the con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty re­quired to pass the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Bill, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would not want to do so with­out the sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). Per­sad-Bisses­sar said so dur­ing yes­ter­day's de­bate on the leg­is­la­tion, which seeks to le­galise the tap­ping of phones. She got up dur­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley's con­tri­bu­tion to de­bate on the leg­is­la­tion, which was pre­sent­ed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Brigadier John Sandy.

Row­ley said even though the Gov­ern­ment did not re­quire the Op­po­si­tion's sup­port to pass the bill, he was ask­ing that cer­tain amend­ments be ac­cept­ed. Per­sad-Bisses­sar made an in­ter­ven­tion: "If it is that the Op­po­si­tion is not in­clined to sup­port the bill, we would not want to pass this bill with­out your sup­port, even though we have the ma­jor­i­ty. "Be­cause I be­lieve it is too im­por­tant and there­fore in the com­mit­tee stage, we can go through and take all your sug­ges­tions and give con­sid­er­a­tions to them," she added. This sparked loud desk-thump­ing in the Par­lia­ment. Row­ley said he was glad to hear that: "It says that Par­lia­ment now has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work as a team to pass good law and not for any par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual par­ti­san pur­pose...That is what Par­lia­ment must al­ways be about."

He said the coun­try was in a "right roy­al mess" be­cause of the il­le­gal in­va­sion of the pri­va­cy of cit­i­zens by the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA) over the past 14 years. He said the mat­ter should not be used to score po­lit­i­cal points, or be treat­ed as a fail­ure of an in­di­vid­ual but a fail­ure of na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions in T&T. Row­ley lat­er said he was de­mand­ing that a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty be es­tab­lished "not (to look at) the op­er­a­tions but all oth­er ac­tions of our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ar­chi­tec­ture." Row­ley said while the SIA was for­mu­lat­ed un­der the Patrick Man­ning regime in 1994, it was "op­er­a­tionalised" by the Bas­deo Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion which came to pow­er in 1995.

He stressed that leg­is­la­tion alone would not solve the prob­lem and there was need to set up a new par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Row­ley al­so sug­gest­ed that the phone-tap­ping should be re­strict­ed to cit­i­zens who are be­lieved to be en­gaged in se­ri­ous crimes. He al­so sug­gest­ed that the clause which pro­vid­ed for a 270-day lim­it to phone-tap­ping be amend­ed be­cause there may be jus­ti­fi­able rea­sons for the se­cu­ri­ty agency to mon­i­tor some­one plan­ning a se­ri­ous crime for more than 270 days. Row­ley slammed Per­sad-Bisses­sar for talk­ing about jail­ing peo­ple guilty of en­gag­ing in the il­le­gal wire­tap­ping of cit­i­zens' phones. He said when­ev­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials talk like that they're talk­ing pol­i­tics. He said the im­pris­on­ment of any­one was a mat­ter for the ju­di­cia­ry and not the Gov­ern­ment.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader called on the Gov­ern­ment to pass leg­is­la­tion to car­ry out the re­quest of the ju­di­cia­ry for the de­struc­tion of all ev­i­dence col­lect­ed by the SIA over the past 14 years. Row­ley said it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for the ev­i­dence to be de­stroyed with­out par­lia­ment leg­is­la­tion. He said there were peo­ple who would want to re­tain the ev­i­dence in sup­port of le­gal chal­lenges ex­pect­ed in the up­com­ing months. Row­ley said he was sure the mat­ter would be tak­en to the Lon­don-based Privy Coun­cil and as a re­sult on­ly the Par­lia­ment could au­tho­rise de­struc­tion of the ev­i­dence.