Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley is de­mand­ing that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is­sue a pub­lic apol­o­gy to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert. Row­ley made the call fol­low­ing Thurs­day's an­gry war of words be­tween Ram­lo­gan and Philbert, over se­cu­ri­ty pro­tec­tion at the Light­house of the Lord Je­sus Christ church on the Heights of Gua­napo in Ari­ma.

In a hard-hit­ting state­ment, Ram­lo­gan had said that Philbert must give an ad­e­quate ex­pla­na­tion for his al­leged fail­ure to pro­tect the site. Fail­ing that, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al sug­gest­ed that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion should take ac­tion to "ac­cel­er­ate" the ter­mi­na­tion of his act­ing ap­point­ment. But yes­ter­day, Row­ley said Ram­lo­gan was en­gag­ing in "open gueril­la war­fare" against Philbert, in "threat­en­ing to fire him."

Row­ley said the Op­po­si­tion "was not pre­pared to tol­er­ate any more fool­ish­ness from the AG." He said Ram­lo­gan at­tacked the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and then the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. Row­ley ques­tioned who would be the AG's next tar­get. "That is not what we want in T&T," he stressed. Row­ley then ad­vised Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who was seat­ed op­po­site him in the Par­lia­ment Cham­ber, to "put a muz­zle and a short leash on the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, and put him in a box un­til the next elec­tion be­cause he seems not to know when he is out of Gov­ern­ment and when he is in Gov­ern­ment."

Row­ley added: "The coun­try de­serves bet­ter and I think he ought to pro­vide an apol­o­gy to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice be­cause this coun­try knows that Philbert was on his way out of of­fice (via re­tire­ment) but his term was ex­tend­ed and ex­tend­ed." Row­ley said he want­ed to know if the AG's last sal­vo was in­tend­ed to give the im­pres­sion that "he was big, bad and ug­ly."

He said: "It's an ug­ly de­vel­op­ment."