Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) deputy leader San­jiv Bood­hu has rub­bished Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der’s in­sis­tence that there is no po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the is­suance of Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs), ac­cus­ing him of mis­un­der­stand­ing the very reg­u­la­tions that gov­ern the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Bood­hu’s crit­i­cism came a day af­ter Alexan­der re­ject­ed claims that politi­cians in­flu­ence the de­ten­tion process, main­tain­ing that PDOs orig­i­nate with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and are not po­lit­i­cal­ly di­rect­ed.

The de­bate comes fol­low­ing the de­ten­tion of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve un­der the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions. Nei­ther has been charged with any of­fence.

But Bood­hu yes­ter­day said Alexan­der’s ex­pla­na­tion was fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong.

“The Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty is ob­vi­ous­ly, but alarm­ing­ly, a stranger to the SoE Reg­u­la­tions,” he said.

He point­ed to a le­gal in­ter­pre­ta­tion is­sued by As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan, which said the reg­u­la­tions make it “clear and plain” that the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, not the po­lice, is the on­ly of­fi­cial au­tho­rised to is­sue a PDO.

“The reg­u­la­tions con­firm in clear and plain lan­guage that the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty is the on­ly per­son au­tho­rised to is­sue a PDO. The PDO is then en­forced in terms of an ar­rest by the TTPS,” he said.

Bood­hu ar­gued that Alexan­der’s own role in ap­prov­ing de­ten­tion or­ders un­der­mines his in­sis­tence that there is no po­lit­i­cal in­volve­ment. He went fur­ther, ac­cus­ing Cab­i­net of grant­i­ng it­self ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers that or­di­nar­i­ly be­long to the courts or the po­lice.

“The fact, not con­jec­ture, fact, is that the Cab­i­net has em­pow­ered them­selves con­tin­u­ous­ly with ex­ec­u­tive pow­er of ar­rest, a pow­er oth­er­wise re­served for the po­lice or the court by way of war­rant or ju­di­cial or­der.”

Ac­cord­ing to Bood­hu, the Con­sti­tu­tion was de­lib­er­ate­ly de­signed to pre­vent gov­ern­ments from di­rect­ing po­lice op­er­a­tions, but the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions now per­mit min­is­ters to au­tho­rise the de­ten­tion of cit­i­zens with­out charge.

“Dur­ing this State of Emer­gency, this Gov­ern­ment not on­ly has giv­en them­selves pow­ers of ar­rest by the stroke of a pen held by the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, they con­tin­ue to use that pow­er on a dai­ly ba­sis to de­tain hun­dreds of cit­i­zens with­out charge, with­out due process, with­out bail.”

Bood­hu ques­tioned why in­di­vid­u­als are be­ing held for months if in­ves­ti­ga­tors al­ready pos­sess ev­i­dence link­ing them to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“The pur­pose of a PDO is de­scribed in the reg­u­la­tions as be­ing a tool to im­me­di­ate­ly ap­pre­hend per­sons who are sus­pect­ed or found to be a threat to pub­lic safe­ty or or­der.

“If, how­ev­er, the state has in­for­ma­tion or ev­i­dence or in­tel­li­gence that a per­son de­tained by a PDO has act­ed in such a man­ner that is in­con­sis­tent with the law, what is the rea­son for hold­ing them for months on end with­out a charge be­ing laid?”

He point­ed to the pre­vi­ous SoE, where nu­mer­ous de­tainees were even­tu­al­ly re­leased with­out be­ing charged, ar­gu­ing that the sys­tem failed to pro­duce mean­ing­ful re­sults while vi­o­lent crime per­sist­ed.

“Con­sid­er the hun­dreds of per­sons re­leased with­out charge at the end of the last SoE who spent months in­car­cer­at­ed. Mur­ders, ex­tor­tion, vi­o­lent rob­beries, kid­nap­ping, shoot­ings all con­tin­ue un­abat­ed.”

Bood­hu said cit­i­zens were there­fore jus­ti­fied in ques­tion­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s mo­tives.

“So, why should the pub­lic draw any con­clu­sion oth­er than the SoE is used as a po­lit­i­cal tool to cir­cum­vent the con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards that pro­tect us, the cit­i­zens, from the abuse of ex­ec­u­tive pow­er, which we no doubt are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dai­ly.”

He said al­though pub­lic at­ten­tion has cen­tred on Hadeeds’ de­ten­tions, the is­sue ex­tends well be­yond them.

“Many think this is about Hadeed and his fam­i­ly but it re­al­ly is not. The Hadeed mat­ter has opened the eyes of some mem­bers of the pub­lic who oth­er­wise may not have re­alised that they too could be sub­ject to the un­re­strict­ed pow­er of the sit­ting Gov­ern­ment, who can lock you up for months, based on what­ev­er al­le­ga­tion they feel to throw at you.”

Bood­hu claimed un­cer­tain­ty was spread­ing through­out the busi­ness sec­tor, from small busi­ness­es to large cor­po­ra­tions.

“The pre­vail­ing feel­ing in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty from SME to large in­dus­try is, ‘Who is next?’”

He called on cit­i­zens to speak out against what he de­scribed as an abuse of ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty.

“This is no time for si­lence. This is time for the pub­lic to stand up and say enough is enough.”

He al­so ap­pealed to rank-and-file po­lice of­fi­cers, say­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the TTPS was be­ing erod­ed.

“It is time for the men and women of the TTPS rank and file to recog­nise that their rep­u­ta­tion and the trust of the peo­ple are be­ing flushed away by the in­ep­ti­tude and ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of this Gov­ern­ment. We are liv­ing in a time of con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis and it is in­tol­er­a­ble.”

PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les al­so took aim at Alexan­der, al­though he said he was re­luc­tant to com­ment ex­ten­sive­ly while po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­main on­go­ing.

“I am try­ing my best not to com­ment on this mat­ter at this time giv­en the fact that in­ves­ti­ga­tions ap­pear to be at a sen­si­tive stage and pru­dence will dic­tate that one should await the out­come of the po­lice work be­fore com­ment­ing,” Gon­za­les said.

How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed Alexan­der should re­frain from mak­ing de­fin­i­tive pub­lic pro­nounce­ments.

“But hav­ing re­gard to the pre­vi­ous ut­ter­ances of key Gov­ern­ment spokesper­sons, in­clud­ing the AG and the PM, the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty would be ad­vised to ‘drink his tea cool’ and not em­bar­rass him­self as he is prone to do.”

Ram­di­al: Po­lice ini­ti­ate, min­is­ter ap­proves

For­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al part­ly agrees with Alexan­der’s ex­pla­na­tion of the de­ten­tion process.

“I re­al­ly don’t think it’s po­lit­i­cal,” she said on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, not­ing al­le­ga­tions cir­cu­lat­ing pub­licly that Hadeed’s wife is close­ly re­lat­ed to a sit­ting Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.

She al­so said while the min­is­ter must ap­prove a PDO, the re­quest orig­i­nates with the po­lice.

“It is re­al­ly the PDOs giv­en on the re­quest of the po­lice. So, it has to be ap­proved by the min­is­ter, but the re­quest comes from the po­lice. So, he is right when he talks about the process with re­spect to that.”

Mean­while, Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day adopt­ed a more cau­tious po­si­tion, say­ing she was not pre­pared to ei­ther con­clude there had been po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence or ac­cept Gov­ern­ment as­sur­ances that there had been none.

“At this stage, I am not pre­pared to con­clude that there was po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, nor am I pre­pared to sim­ply ac­cept as­sur­ances that there was none,” Pan­day said.

“The facts must be al­lowed to emerge and the au­thor­i­ties must ul­ti­mate­ly ac­count for their ac­tions.”

She added that in­ves­ti­ga­tors should be al­lowed to com­plete their work and that any con­clu­sions should ul­ti­mate­ly be guid­ed by ev­i­dence and due process.