PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment would not have left the pub­lic in the dark if there were a se­ri­ous se­cu­ri­ty threat to the coun­try and will not do so in fu­ture.

This was the as­sur­ance of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der yes­ter­day, even as the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and oth­er stake­hold­ers con­demned the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the mat­ter.

In de­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion, Alexan­der urged the pub­lic not to source in­for­ma­tion on such se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters via so­cial me­dia.

“Be­fore you go to so­cial me­dia and build your opin­ion from it, know the truth. And I speak to what hap­pened on Fri­day. Stop go­ing to so­cial me­dia for guid­ance when there are lead­ers in your com­mu­ni­ty who should tell you what will hap­pen next? If some­thing was to hap­pen, we will not hide that from any­body. How can we?” said Alexan­der.

He made the com­ment while ad­dress­ing a gath­er­ing at the open­ing of Daisy’s Ex­clu­sive’s new branch in Tu­na­puna, where he was in­vit­ed to speak as the con­stituen­cy’s Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment.

On Fri­day, the coun­try was sent in­to pan­ic mode when sto­ries from in­ter­na­tion­al news or­gan­i­sa­tions re­port­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a planned Unit­ed States strike on Venezuela, co­in­cid­ed with a lo­cal re­port of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force be­ing placed on “State One Alert”—the high­est alert sta­tus of the lo­cal mil­i­tary.

Leave for po­lice of­fi­cers was al­so sus­pend­ed.

This led to wide­spread pub­lic con­cern, pan­ic buy­ing at gas sta­tions and gro­ceries, as well as chil­dren be­ing pulled out of schools by their par­ents/guardians.

The army’s alert sta­tus has since been re­vert­ed to nor­mal.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Alexan­der la­belled Fri­day’s sce­nario as chaos cre­at­ed by agents on so­cial me­dia. He said the Gov­ern­ment would not have left the cit­i­zen­ry in the dark if there were a threat.

“Let us be hon­est here, what so­cial me­dia has done on Fri­day is cre­ate chaos for them­selves, for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. For the old and the young, chaos. We have re­spon­si­bil­i­ties,” he said.

“I’m the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty. Mr (Wayne) Sturge is the Min­is­ter of De­fence. We have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­port to our peo­ple. If we are aware that some­thing is about to go down, you think we will sit there? You think we’ll walk in­to Par­lia­ment and go about our law­ful busi­ness?”

He added, “Do not use your plat­form to try to send per­sons in a dis­ar­ray be­cause it could have re­sult­ed in things hap­pen­ing to chil­dren. The ru­mours spread that school was over, who gave in­struc­tions to tell per­sons school is over when per­sons were still in school? So, it’s just ru­mours af­ter ru­mours and peo­ple jump­ing in the car and leav­ing, and all of these things. And I say, look how easy it was that day.”

Alexan­der said the Gov­ern­ment should not have to hold a press con­fer­ence to ad­dress every ru­mour raised by so­cial me­dia, as he urged more of the pub­lic to be in­de­pen­dent thinkers.

On Fri­day when the me­dia asked both Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Alexan­der for re­spons­es on the is­sue as they en­tered Par­lia­ment for the sit­ting, the PM said she was un­aware of the army’s “State One Pos­ture” ac­tion, while Alexan­der said such ac­tion was “a nor­mal thing.”

How­ev­er, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has since con­firmed the mil­i­tary ac­tion and de­fend­ed the lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion giv­en con­cern­ing the alert sta­tus. He said the ac­tion was in fact an as­sess­ment ex­er­cise to gauge the ef­fec­tive­ness and re­sponse time of T&T’s mil­i­tary to a pos­si­ble na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat and be­cause of that, it wasn’t in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est for Gov­ern­ment re­veal it pub­licly.

In the wake of Fri­day’s events, for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah said bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion was need­ed from the Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, when asked if the Gov­ern­ment could have adopt­ed any of the sug­ges­tions made by these ex­perts, Alexan­der re­it­er­at­ed that Gov­ern­ment would not have been mum if there had been a se­ri­ous in­ci­dent.

“I think peo­ple ought to be more re­spon­si­ble, and not every­thing that the so­cial me­dia says, I think I, as the min­is­ter, I have to come out and cor­rect it. So the sky is go­ing to fall this evening and fall the so­cial me­dia said, Trinidad and To­ba­go, we just want you to know that we have no in­for­ma­tion at all that the sky is go­ing to fall, a train is go­ing to pass through Trinidad and To­ba­go this evening, at six, Trinidad and To­ba­go, we just want to in­form you that no train you think that is cre­at­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic, right? That makes log­i­cal sense?” asked the min­is­ter.

“Where did the in­for­ma­tion come from? That’s the first thing you have to find out. Where did the in­for­ma­tion come from? Where? Who? Who gave that in­for­ma­tion, and every­body chim­ing in and com­ing in and mak­ing all kind of state­ments and all that I viewed as just a whole bunch of rub­bish. Be­cause if you have that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and you have the in­for­ma­tion as to what is hap­pen­ing in terms of your peo­ple, we will not leave you.”

He point­ed out that Gov­ern­ment had pre­vi­ous­ly sent out no­tices an­nounc­ing the open­ing of Pri­or­i­ty Bus Routes in pre­vi­ous in­stances of emer­gen­cies.

Grif­fith: UNC can’t blame pub­lic for pan­icked re­sponse

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Grif­fith felt the min­is­ter’s stance, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the se­quence of Fri­day’s events, was “to­tal­ly in­cor­rect.”

“Min­is­ter Alexan­der, I will con­tin­ue to sup­port you and as­sist to en­sure that you suc­ceed, but at the same time, you’re to­tal­ly in­cor­rect,” Grif­fith said in a video he re­leased on so­cial me­dia.

“One of the things in­volv­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is to take away the per­cep­tion and fear of crime. The coun­try was fear­ful. They were mor­ti­fied,” said Grif­fith.

He con­tin­ued, “When it is you have a sit­u­a­tion where si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, al­most every sol­dier and sailor and air per­son from the Air Guard, you were asked to re­port for du­ty, si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The po­lice were told of­fi­cers who were on leave were asked to re­port off leave si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The Mi­a­mi Her­ald made men­tion that there’s a plan for Unit­ed States to in­vade Venezuela with all of these things, so good­ly Min­is­ter, that is not the sky is falling? That is not a train ar­riv­ing at six o’clock that can cause the av­er­age cit­i­zen to be fear­ful and look at what hap­pened?”

Grif­fith point­ed out the fact that even the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment on Fri­day that she was un­aware of the sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing sol­diers and po­lice sig­nalled a break­down in the com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

“You can’t blame the coun­try for them be­ing fear­ful be­cause they are cit­i­zens. They’re not a law en­force­ment ex­pert like you, and that is why we formed the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, good­ly min­is­ter,” said Grif­fith, “Some­times it is mis­chief, some­times, yes, but what is re­quired is for those re­spon­si­ble to im­me­di­ate­ly put some de­gree of as­sur­ance to the pub­lic. It was not done. Even the Prime Min­is­ter did not know what was hap­pen­ing. So, some­thing went wrong.”

Op­po­si­tion PNM MP Symon de No­bri­ga al­so rub­bished Alexan­der’s call for peo­ple to not ac­cess their news or ad­vice from so­cial me­dia.

De No­bri­ga said, “Imag­ine the par­ty that spent nine and a half years un­der­min­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in all forms of au­thor­i­ty, pri­mar­i­ly through their min­ions on so­cial me­dia, is now telling you not to lis­ten to so­cial me­dia! When your main ob­jec­tive is to cre­ate chaos in a so­ci­ety then at some point you’ll learn the hard les­son: that chaos can­not be man­aged and it comes for all of us.”

He added, “The UNC op­er­at­ed as Op­po­si­tion, en­tered Gov­ern­ment and has gov­erned on the back of lies, spin and lever­ag­ing fear and so­cial di­vi­sion. They’ve shown over the last six months that they can­not do the hard work that’s re­quired to man­age the af­fairs of a com­plex so­ci­ety.

“Now they’re say­ing ‘don’t lis­ten to so­cial me­dia’ and ‘don’t trust tra­di­tion­al me­dia while not com­ing to the pop­u­la­tion to ad­dress re­al, ram­pant fears.”

He said the PNM had warned the pop­u­la­tion for years that the UNC were chaos-mon­gers.

“Now we must all reap the whirl­wind.”