Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pe­ter Kan­hai has dis­tanced the par­ty from re­ports that an at­tor­ney “with close ties” to the par­ty is among con­spir­a­tors in a plot to kill De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge.

This, af­ter re­ports of such a plot sur­faced on the week­end.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie had said in Ju­ly that the cur­rent State of Emer­gency was de­clared af­ter the dis­cov­ery of plots to as­sas­si­nate “key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials,” mem­bers of the jus­tice sys­tem and law en­force­ment; and to at­tack state build­ings.

On Au­gust 1, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that se­cu­ri­ty was in­creased for all of­fi­cials tar­get­ed in as­sas­si­na­tion plots or­gan­ised by a crime syn­di­cate op­er­at­ing from with­in the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, in­clud­ing min­is­ters who were al­so tar­get­ed. The Prime Min­is­ter sub­se­quent­ly re­vealed threats on the lives of Min­is­ters Bar­ry Padarath (han­dling CEPEP), Kadi­jah Ameen (URP) and URP pro­gramme man­ag­er Fer­oze Khan.

The lat­est in­tel­li­gence al­leged that Sturge was tar­get­ed due to a re­port­ed re­fusal to com­ply with de­mands to ap­point cer­tain peo­ple to jobs in his To­co/San­gre Grande con­stituen­cy, the mil­i­tary and state posts - in­clud­ing Sturge’s De­fence Min­istry and the URP. It was re­port­ed that an in­flu­en­tial at­tor­ney with “close ties” to the UNC was among con­spir­a­tors, along with il­le­gal quar­ri­ers from To­co and San­ta Cruz and a mil­i­tary per­son.

Yes­ter­day, UNC’s Kan­hai said he was sure the au­thor­i­ties will look in­to such al­le­ga­tions.

On the at­tor­ney with ties to the UNC, Kan­hai said, “I have no such in­for­ma­tion of any such per­son con­nect­ed to the UNC and I’m sure the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties will con­duct the nec­es­sary in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mat­ter.”

Pressed on the fact that re­port­ed in­for­ma­tion in­di­cat­ed the threat was by a per­son with ties to the par­ty, Kan­hai said, “Any threat to any cit­i­zen of T&T should con­cern all of us. But I know the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties will in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter.”

UNC chair­man Dave Tan­coo didn’t com­ment, nor did PRO Kirk Meighoo.

While some UNC ex­ec­u­tives dis­missed the re­port as “hearsay and in­nu­en­do,” Guardian Me­dia checks re­vealed an­oth­er top UNC of­fi­cial in a key post in the To­co/Grande con­stituen­cy re­ceived a threat re­gard­ing URP jobs in May. This was via a voice note.

The per­son re­port­ed that it came from a T&T voice on a Venezue­lan cell phone num­ber. The mes­sage was that this time they were “not go­ing to dig up bod­ies and burn them again,” but they would be “leav­ing heads on the round­about.”

The UNC of­fi­cial who re­ceived the threat has noth­ing to do with URP jobs. The per­son re­port­ed the mat­ter to the po­lice, who were sub­se­quent­ly in touch with them to see if they re­ceived more threats. The per­son blocked the num­ber.

Gov­er­ment of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day that the sit­u­a­tion oc­cur­ring with fights for URP jobs, for in­stance, arose as a re­sult of “will­ful ne­glect of the pro­gramme, where peo­ple with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion were al­lowed to fa­cil­i­tate ghost gangs and some crim­i­nal el­e­ments were al­lowed to op­er­ate these to the detri­ment of those who re­al­ly need the pro­gramme to sur­vive.”

They ex­pect­ed the re­struc­tur­ing of URP and oth­er so­cial pro­grammes to be con­clud­ed soon.

No threats to me - ex-MP Mon­roe

Yes­ter­day, for­mer PNM To­co/Grande MP Roger Mon­roe said, “I ex­pe­ri­enced none of those threats which are be­ing re­port­ed con­cern­ing the cur­rent MP. Based on the in­for­ma­tion of the sit­u­a­tion about him, it is very un­for­tu­nate.”

He added, “Yes, dur­ing our term peo­ple ap­proached for var­i­ous things and op­por­tu­ni­ties and those who were qual­i­fied and were suc­cess­ful went ahead and pro­vid­ed ser­vices. With those who didn’t qual­i­fy, I had no af­ter-ef­fects in terms of threats.”

On whether there had been ap­proach­es from un­scrupu­lous sources in his term, Mon­roe said peo­ple deemed un­fit may have made ap­proach­es and in cas­es where per­sons were not qual­i­fied or weren’t ful­ly pre­pared, “that nev­er went any­where if they didn’t have the prop­er doc­u­ments or reg­is­tra­tion. But I didn’t have that prob­lem with threats or so hap­pen­ing.”