Akash Sama­roo

A deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is warn­ing po­lice of­fi­cers that those who do the dirty work of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will feel their wrath if the Op­po­si­tion re­turns to gov­ern­ment.

As the UNC held an­oth­er one of its Pave­ment Re­ports on Thurs­day night in Bar­rack­pore, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal ac­cused the PNM of pres­sur­ing hard-work­ing and ex­pe­ri­enced po­lice of­fi­cers to go af­ter po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents.

He said as the gen­er­al elec­tion draws near­er, he an­tic­i­pates such un­der­hand­ed ac­tiv­i­ty to in­ten­si­fy. But he sought to cau­tion any of­fi­cer who de­cides to take up that as­sign­ment.

“I will not be sur­prised if be­tween now and the elec­tion, they work with el­e­ments in the po­lice, they have el­e­ments in the po­lice. I want to warn po­lice of­fi­cers to­day, that if you bow, if you take God out of your thoughts and you go to the PNM to do their dirty work, a UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion work­ing with law en­force­ment will make you ac­count­able for that. Do not do the dirty work of the PNM,” the Oropouche East MP warned.

Mooni­lal sought to re­as­sure those of­fi­cers he claimed were un­der po­lit­i­cal pres­sure, that re­lief was com­ing soon.

“They are in­tim­i­dat­ing law en­force­ment to do their dirty work, and I ask the po­lice of­fi­cers to stand strong, their days are num­bered, you do not have to suc­cumb to their bul­ly­ing, in­tim­i­da­tion and ha­rass­ment,” he claimed.

Mooni­lal al­leged that some­one had al­ready lost their job be­cause they re­fused to in­ter­cept the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship.

Mooni­lal did not spec­i­fy who that per­son was but Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the now-dis­missed of­fi­cial had re­port­ed­ly re­fused to in­ter­cept phone calls made to and from a for­mer se­nior Cab­i­net of­fi­cial’s cell phone.

Mooni­lal boast­ed to the Bar­rack­pore gath­er­ing that no min­is­ter of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s PP cab­i­net had been charged and con­vict­ed of any of­fence while in gov­ern­ment.

“They tried with Anand Ram­lo­gan, hav­ing a man from Eng­land some­where lie and give false state­ments and so on and the thing blew up in their face. There are min­is­ters in the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment, one day they will have to an­swer for what they did with that Vin­cent Nel­son mat­ter. And they may face crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Try­ing to set up Anand Ram­lo­gan and oth­ers,” he al­leged.

Mooni­lal claimed that in lieu of a gen­uine plan to im­prove the lives of cit­i­zens, the PNM will cam­paign on spu­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions against Op­po­si­tion mem­bers.

“The PNM has no track record, so what do you think they will do? They will come dur­ing an elec­tion to say the UNC, the Part­ner­ship en­gaged in this and that, Row­ley did it in San Fer­nan­do City Hall a few months ago, his whole speech was al­le­ga­tions un­der the Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion,” he added.

Re­spond­ing to claims of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the po­lice ser­vice yes­ter­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion head, act­ing As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent (ASP) Gideon Dick­son, said the com­ments were symp­toms of the po­lit­i­cal sea­son.

“We un­der­stand that it is the sil­ly sea­son, we un­der­stand that politi­cians do and say what they need to do and say and we al­so un­der­stand that we have a role and func­tion un­der the law,” Dick­son said.

He said de­spite what­ev­er al­le­ga­tions come from po­lit­i­cal plat­forms, po­lice of­fi­cers are aware of their role and func­tion in so­ci­ety.

“Where we do what we need to do be­cause we have to do it, and it is with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of our du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties so we will not be drawn in­to the ut­ter­ances by the politi­cians,” he as­sured.

ASP Dick­son said the po­lice do not take po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tives.

“I am not aware that we do the bid­ding of the politi­cians, I am aware that we op­er­ate un­der a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and we treat with every sin­gle mem­ber of the pub­lic in a fair man­ner and in in­stances where there are breach­es in the law, we would in­ves­ti­gate and bring per­pe­tra­tors be­fore jus­tice once there is ev­i­dence,” he con­tend­ed.

ASP Dick­son said his mem­bers will take no of­fence to Mooni­lal’s warn­ing or as­ser­tions, as he is en­ti­tled to free speech. How­ev­er, he said that priv­i­lege of­ten shows peo­ple’s true colours.