Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the ab­sence of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs from the coun­try dur­ing the in­sti­tu­tion of a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency is "mad­ness." He said it was "suf­fi­cient­ly trou­ble­some" for the Gov­ern­ment to war­rant a state of emer­gency days af­ter the killings in Ari­ma where four peo­ple were shot but not so se­ri­ous to de­mand that Gibbs re­main at home and con­tribute to na­tion­al pro­tec­tion. Row­ley said: "If this is not mad­ness, you tell me what is." He was speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader on Charles Street, Port-of-Spain.

Row­ley said the day af­ter the killings, the Gov­ern­ment ap­proved Gibbs' leave of ab­sence. "So here it is you are re­act­ing to the mas­sacre with a state of emer­gency be­cause no gov­ern­ment can sit qui­et­ly and watch this hap­pen and do noth­ing," he said. "The Gov­ern­ment had to do some­thing and as I said, gov­ern­ments have op­tions, so you had to re­spond. "This hap­pened on Thurs­day night and we are now find­ing out...the Gov­ern­ment is now ad­mit­ting they ap­proved the ab­sence from the coun­try of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice." He said one of the main com­po­nents of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil which formed part of any se­ri­ous de­lib­er­a­tions about ac­tiv­i­ties con­cern­ing the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of a state of emer­gency was ab­sent.

He said the Gov­ern­ment de­clared a state of emer­gency on the coun­try by ac­ci­dent. He claimed the en­tire process of a state of emer­gency was run by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. Row­ley al­so raised ques­tions about Ram­lo­gan's cred­i­bil­i­ty. "When the Ari­ma sit­u­a­tion took place, the pan­ic didn't take place be­cause of any con­sid­er­a­tion or con­cern for the peo­ple, it was out of con­cern for how it (crime rate) stash­es up against last year," he said. He claimed Gov­ern­ment op­er­at­ed to al­ways gain po­lit­i­cal mileage un­der the guise of be­ing con­cerned about the well-be­ing of cit­i­zens.