Rose­marie Sant

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says raids on mosques over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od were jus­ti­fied af­ter “lethal weapons, arms and am­mu­ni­tion” were found at the Masjid-ul-Mut­taqeen Mosque in Cunu­pia on Thurs­day.

Ad­dress­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Barataria on Wednes­day night, hours af­ter the find by se­cu­ri­ty forces, Row­ley re­called that when the se­cu­ri­ty forces raid­ed the mosques pri­or to Car­ni­val, “there were those who told the coun­try the Gov­ern­ment is an­ti-Mus­lim, an­ti-this and telling the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty how the Gov­ern­ment capri­cious­ly was do­ing this and do­ing that to places of wor­ship.”

“To­day, one of the very mosques we had to raid at Car­ni­val time, on cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion that the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices had, we have found with­in that place of wor­ship lethal weapons, arms and am­mu­ni­tion,” Row­ley told sup­port­ers.

Giv­en the find, he won­dered what those who had “car­ried a con­ver­sa­tion that the Gov­ern­ment was an­ti-Mus­lim and we were, in fact, des­e­crat­ing places of wor­ship would say.”

Row­ley said the mes­sage which they had sent to the pop­u­la­tion was that “if you know there are arms and am­mu­ni­tion find­ing their way in­to places of wor­ship, whether is Bap­tist, Or­isha, Hin­du or Mus­lim, the po­lice must not act be­cause if the po­lice act those loud­mouths with their own per­son­al agen­da will stir up racial strife.”

He told the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty and es­pe­cial­ly the lead­ers in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty: “None of us have any­thing to gain by en­cour­ag­ing that kind of de­vel­op­ment.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said: “It is im­por­tant that we tell our young peo­ple who may be want­i­ng to go down that road there is noth­ing but sad­ness and sor­row at the end of that path­way.”

As he wound up his near one-hour ad­dress the PM turned to the is­sue of race, which he said had been raised by the Op­po­si­tion in the Par­lia­ment dur­ing the de­bate on the re­port of the Spe­cial Se­lect Com­mit­tee on the nom­i­na­tions for De­o­dath Du­lalchan as Com­mis­sion­er and Harold Phillips as Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, ac­cus­ing the UNC of try­ing to “cre­ate racial strife,” in the coun­try.

Row­ley said it was Tabaquite MP Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan who, dur­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of St Joseph MP Dr Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of not want­i­ng an “In­di­an Com­mis­sion­er.”

He said af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress walked out of the Par­lia­ment and the Par­lia­ment de­cid­ed to send back the process to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, the sin­gu­lar state­ment which came from the UNC the next day from its pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Ani­ta Haynes was that “the PNM con­trived last night to re­move the In­di­an nom­i­nee and did not do any­thing about the African nom­i­nee in the Par­lia­ment, so Du­lalchan blocked but Phillip was not.”

Row­ley said there was no truth to the al­le­ga­tion since the po­si­tion was that the Gov­ern­ment would not sup­port the no­ti­fi­ca­tion which the Pres­i­dent had sent to the Par­lia­ment on the ba­sis of the rec­om­men­da­tion of the PSC.

“We said the process was flawed and from that flawed process no­body could be ap­point­ed,” he said, adding that de­ci­sion “af­fects Mr Du­lalchan in a par­tic­u­lar way be­cause he can­not be Com­mis­sion­er and Phillip can­not be Deputy Com­mis­sion­er.”

But Row­ley said even with­out the process “Phillip is al­ready the deputy. So why is the UNC ly­ing to the coun­try to cre­ate racial strife, to say we took an ac­tion that was se­lec­tive against Du­lalchan and to favour Phillip?”

How­ev­er, the T&T Guardian con­firmed that both Du­lalchan and Phillip hold the sub­stan­tive po­si­tions of As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er and both are cur­rent­ly Act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers.

Row­ley said the out­come of the de­bate was that the whole mat­ter would go back to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to deal with and that the com­mis­sion did not take in­struc­tions from the Gov­ern­ment, but was an in­de­pen­dent com­mis­sion.”

He ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of be­ing “pre­pared to play fast and loose,” and “al­ways play­ing the race card,” but that when he re­spond­ed, “they jump up to ac­cuse me of race be­cause I re­spond­ing to them.”

He ques­tioned al­le­ga­tions of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the coun­try, ask­ing, “Where is racial dis­crim­i­na­tion hap­pen­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go?”

He said: “As a coun­try, we all in dan­ger of those who will use race to de­stroy Trinidad and To­ba­go, they don’t want us to speak about it but they want to use it to dri­ve their pol­i­tics.”