Yvonne Ba­boolal

A war of words erupt­ed be­tween PNM sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day over the "spy list" which was re­vealed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bissses­sar re­cent­ly.

Hinds, mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate on the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Bill, said when the PM re­vealed to the na­tion that the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA) had been spy­ing on dozens of peo­ple, some of it may be "ex­ag­ger­at­ed" and "spec­u­la­tive."Cau­tioned by the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent not to im­pute im­prop­er state­ments or cast as­per­sions, Hinds added that a lot of what the PM said "re­mains un­chal­lenged."

"We have no way to de­ter­mine whether it is true or false," he said.

At this, Ram­lo­gan shot to his feet. Hinds re­fused to give way, but Ram­lo­gan stood his ground, cit­ing Stand­ing Or­der 35.5.Hinds sunk to his seat as Ram­lo­gan took the floor."The min­is­ter is say­ing that the in­for­ma­tion about cit­i­zens was ex­ag­ger­at­ed or un­true and that there is no way to test it," the AG said."It's like say­ing we lied to the na­tion...That's what I un­der­stood him to be say­ing."

Ram­lo­gan's ob­jec­tion was shot down, how­ev­er, as the Pres­i­dent said he didn't think Hinds went so far as to im­pute im­prop­er mo­tives.

Con­tin­u­ing, the PNM sen­a­tor said se­cre­cy was the essence of the suc­cess of in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and im­plied that ex­pos­ing the spy agency's work in­ter­fered with crime-fight­ing.He said af­ter the PM re­vealed the list, there were 32 mur­ders over a ten-day pe­ri­od.

"Crim­i­nals prey on your per­ceived weak­ness­es," he warned.Hinds urged the Gov­ern­ment to pro­claim the bill as soon as it is passed and claimed that kid­nap­pings for ran­som were not re­duced in 2006 and 2007 by chance."It (spy leg­is­la­tion) was the guid­ing light in in­ter­cep­tion...Don't fur­ther weak­en it," he said."Had it not been for the work of the SIA, 500 mur­ders could have eas­i­ly been 1,000."

Giv­ing an ex­am­ple, he said two gangs planned to have a shoot-out at a par­ty in Bel­mont.

"But some­body saw, heard, felt and made the in­ter­ven­tion be­fore it hap­pened," Hinds said.He fur­ther charged that the PM's ex­pose of the spy agency had a de­mor­al­is­ing ef­fect on male and fe­male op­er­a­tives in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.His col­league, PNM sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi said there had been un­de­sir­able spike in crime since the ex­po­sure of the spy list."Units (spy) were im­me­di­ate­ly turned off," he said.

"There was poor ex­e­cu­tion of judg­ment in the dis­clo­sure of their (Gov­ern­ment's) re­cent dis­cov­ery."He said in the Unit­ed King­dom, there were two back­ground pieces of leg­is­la­tion for the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act; the Of­fi­cial Se­crets Act and the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act.In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Corinne Bap­tiste-McK­night said com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts might be in­ter­rupt­ed while the leg­is­la­tion was be­ing amend­ed.Ram­lo­gan, dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, praised the Po­lice Ser­vice for work­ing un­der tremen­dous pres­sure.