On Sun­day, at the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Sports and Fam­i­ly Day in To­co, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ap­peared to link Fri­day’s bomb threats, which dis­rupt­ed the na­tion’s school sys­tem, with a mo­tion of no-con­fi­dence in the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Fitzger­ald Hinds, brought by the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

“You think that it is ac­ci­den­tal that, on the very day that they are hav­ing a vote of no con­fi­dence in the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, who they had been pil­lo­ry­ing non-stop, that on that day you wake up in the morn­ing and vir­tu­al­ly every school in the coun­try has a bomb threat?

“You think that’s a joke? You think that’s by ac­ci­dent?...Of all the days in the year, the one day that hap­pens is the day when they are com­ing to Par­lia­ment to move a vote of no con­fi­dence in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter.”

If ter­ror­ism is the use of in­ten­tion­al vi­o­lence and fear to achieve po­lit­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal aims, there is no doubt that email­ing bomb threats to dozens of schools in both To­ba­go and Trinidad con­sti­tute acts of ter­ror.

As Dr Row­ley him­self asked on Sun­day: “You know that if you shut down every school in this coun­try by call­ing in a bomb threat, the chaos and trau­ma you will cause to those chil­dren and the fear in their par­ents?”

So if the bomb threats were acts of ter­ror, and the Prime Min­is­ter is link­ing the Op­po­si­tion to the bomb threats, it fol­lows that he is rais­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the UNC is a ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion, or that it har­bours ter­ror­ists with­in its ranks.

This is, of course, an ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous and dam­ag­ing al­le­ga­tion to make against a par­ty that at­tract­ed 47.14 per cent of vot­ers in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion and holds 19 of the 41 seats in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

The ques­tion that Dr Row­ley must an­swer is this: Does he have a scin­til­la of ev­i­dence to sup­port his sug­ges­tion that the Op­po­si­tion is some­how linked to the bomb threats?

By virtue of his po­si­tion as Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Row­ley is in a po­si­tion to re­ceive re­ports and in­for­ma­tion from T&T’s se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies and their in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts.

If he does have ev­i­dence, he would have re­ceived it in his ca­pac­i­ty as chair­man of T&T’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, at a time when this coun­try’s cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty agents would have been at the start of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the bomb threats.

If he does have ev­i­dence, there­fore, the Prime Min­is­ter’s in­cen­di­ary ques­tions would have tipped off the per­pe­tra­tors, pos­si­bly mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult to un­cov­er them.

If Dr Row­ley made his com­ments with­out the ben­e­fit of any ev­i­dence–if the point­ed ques­tions were based on a feel­ing or a sus­pi­cion–he has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to apol­o­gise to the na­tion or now find some oth­er way to re­duce the po­lit­i­cal tem­per­a­ture of the coun­try.

The tem­per­a­ture has been in­creased re­cent­ly by the com­ments of a Hin­du pun­dit on crime and by the gen­er­al na­tion­al un­ease about the per­cep­tion that mur­ders and home in­va­sions seem to be out of the con­trol of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty au­thor­i­ties.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley’s com­ments on Sun­day could have in­creased the po­lit­i­cal heat in the coun­try be­yond boil­ing point.

A wise leader, who has the in­ter­est of the na­tion at heart, would re­alise the dan­ger this presents to the coun­try’s fu­ture...and would be look­ing to se­cure cold wa­ter.