Akash Sama­roo

Roger Gas­pard SC is seek­ing coun­sel as he pre­pares to re­spond to a lash­ing from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) pub­lic meet­ing in Barataria on Thurs­day night.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Row­ley ac­cused the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) of wast­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey with de­mands for se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at a build­ing the Gov­ern­ment had sourced for its op­er­a­tions.

“I don’t want to use the words I want to use be­cause that will tell you too much,” Row­ley told sup­port­ers.

“I re­mem­ber it be­ing said that the DPP doesn’t have space to put lawyers, what did the Cab­i­net do? “Un­der­stand­ing that of­fice is an im­por­tant of­fice, the most we can do is give the re­sources that are avail­able and af­ford­able. The Gov­ern­ment went and found ex­ec­u­tive of­fice for the DPP over three years now, I don’t have time tonight to tell you all the sto­ry ... af­ter three years of find­ing ex­ec­u­tive of­fice for the DPP, not a foot­step in­side the of­fice, and we pay­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in rent.”

Apart from throw­ing mon­ey away in rent, the Prime Min­is­ter said ef­forts to out­fit the build­ing al­so went down the drain.

“They want bul­let-proof glass, months pass­ing, they put bul­let-proof glass on the build­ing, they want a wall, a wall out­side the bul­let-proof glass, I don’t have time to ex­plain it to you all tonight,” Row­ley said, not­ing the own­er of the build­ing even­tu­al­ly told them to stop mak­ing ad­just­ments to his build­ing.

“This is the kind of non­sense that is go­ing on in this coun­try,” the PM said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Gas­pard said, “Seems to me that a re­sponse is called for and ac­cord­ing­ly, I am seek­ing the ad­vice of per­sons wis­er than I am.”

How­ev­er, the DPP re­fused to elab­o­rate on who those “wis­er per­sons” were.

Mean­while, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress yes­ter­day slammed Row­ley for what it called an at­tack on the Of­fice of the DPP.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion in Port-of-Spain, Sen­a­tor Wade Mark claimed that the Prime Min­is­ter’s “bit­ter­ness” to­wards Gas­pard had noth­ing to do with any emp­ty build­ing, but more so with the fact that the DPP this week dis­con­tin­ued one of the cor­rup­tion cas­es re­lat­ing to the Pi­ar­co Air­port de­vel­op­ment project.

“Dr Row­ley told Trinidad and To­ba­go that the wheels of jus­tice turn very slow­ly but they even­tu­al­ly turn, and he has no com­plaint and no prob­lems what­so­ev­er with what has hap­pened in the courts re the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the cor­rup­tion case. And as he said that in one breath, in an­oth­er breath, he launched an all-out as­sault on the Of­fice of Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions,” Mark said.

He was re­fer­ring to the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the Pi­ar­co Three case against for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, his wife Oma, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Car­los John and busi­ness­man Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh.

That case per­tained to a £25,000 bribe al­leged­ly re­ceived by Pan­day and his wife, and al­leged­ly paid by John and Gal­barans­ingh, as an al­leged in­duce­ment in re­la­tion to the Pi­ar­co Air­port project.

In dis­con­tin­u­ing the case ear­li­er this week, DPP Gas­pard not­ed that the state was un­like­ly to be suc­cess­ful in the pro­tract­ed mat­ter, which be­gan in 2006. How­ev­er, he sub­se­quent­ly point­ed out that he in­tend­ed to con­tin­ue with the oth­er three re­lat­ed Pi­ar­co cor­rup­tion cas­es.

Yes­ter­day, Mark sug­gest­ed there was some­thing sin­is­ter be­hind the PM’s state­ment on the po­lit­i­cal plat­form.

“Is he try­ing to frus­trate Gas­pard in­to leav­ing the Of­fice of the DPP?” Mark asked, “What is the ob­jec­tive of the Prime Min­is­ter?”

Mark said it was dis­taste­ful for Dr Row­ley to use a po­lit­i­cal plat­form to “un­leash fire and brim­stone on the of­fice of the DPP.”

He added that the PM’s tone of dis­ap­proval for Gas­pard was more than ap­par­ent.

“He quot­ed some let­ter from some woman called, I think she is the Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, some Joan Hon­ore-Paul and he spoke about her in glow­ing terms, but in the case of Gas­pard, he was bit­ter! Ran­corous!” Mark said.

“We wish to strong­ly and round­ly con­demn the con­duct of the Prime Min­is­ter; the Prime Min­is­ter is seek­ing to un­der­mine and sub­vert the in­de­pen­dent of­fice of the DPP,” he said.