Is the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) a rogue or­gan­i­sa­tion? Is it a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agency that serves the na­tion­al good and the pub­lic in­ter­est? Is it po­lit­i­cal­ly pli­able or mal­leable? Does it serve its own in­ter­est and pur­sue its own agen­da, and on what ba­sis are de­ci­sions made to do this? To whom is it ac­count­able? And can that ac­count­abil­i­ty sys­tem be trust­ed in the na­tion­al in­ter­est and for the pub­lic good?

Is the coun­try safer with SSA than with­out it?

Giv­en the fi­as­co that has emerged from the leak of an in­ter­cept­ed pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion be­tween two cit­i­zens to a tabloid news­pa­per, can it be trust­ed? Can the SSA be re­deemed? This is not the first time the SSA has had a prob­lem or been a prob­lem. Un­der the Dr Kei­th Row­ley gov­ern­ment, the SSA di­rec­tor at the time was fired and nepo­tism and re­li­gious padding were re­vealed as rife in the agency.

The SSA is cur­rent­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by po­lice. Let’s see what the in­ves­ti­ga­tion yields.

The cas­es against Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed and Star Sab­ga will be re­solved one way or the oth­er. We may have mul­ti­ple roads to trav­el. The le­git­i­ma­cy of the ac­cu­sa­tion of a mur­der plot against the Prime Min­is­ter will be test­ed in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion (be­ing con­duct­ed now) in pro­vi­sion of ev­i­dence, by the hear­ing of any charges laid, in a court of law and by its le­gal de­ter­mi­na­tion af­ter due process—which may in­volve sev­er­al lay­ers of court in­volve­ment. But it will al­so be for­mi­da­bly and per­sis­tent­ly test­ed in the court of pub­lic opin­ion.

At the mo­ment, every­thing and every­body looks bad. At the mere min­i­mum, what the re­sult of all of this will end up be­ing is that the State of Emer­gency will have to be brought to an end. What­ev­er good it might have served is now his­to­ry! Er­rors of judge­ment and flawed gov­er­nance prac­tices tend to delig­itimise.

But so­ci­etal cracks have be­come fis­sures in T&T and the fis­sures are now open wounds. And it is clear that there is anger, re­sent­ment and hate. The so­cial fab­ric, held in cre­ative ten­sion by a rub­ber band, is now stretch­ing to its lim­its. And cen­tres of good­will are jad­ed.

A lot of the scep­ti­cism and anx­i­ety in the so­ci­ety is root­ed in the blur­ring of lines. For ex­am­ple, the blur­ring of lines be­tween gov­er­nance and pol­i­tics; be­tween in­di­vid­u­als in their min­is­te­r­i­al roles and their pur­suit of what some in­ter­pret as po­lit­i­cal ob­jec­tives; the par­ti­san align­ments in the nav­i­ga­tion of law and the ju­di­cial sys­tem and en­trenched ad­ver­sar­i­al stances be­tween Op­po­si­tion and Gov­ern­ment in the pub­lic re­la­tions bat­tle over le­gal­i­ties; the un­cer­tain­ty about what a widen­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion with in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tors may yield about cor­rup­tion, sub­ver­sion and com­plic­i­ty in our coun­try, or whether it will all come to nought; the con­stant po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tions and com­men­tary and pub­lic ad­vo­ca­cy that re­spond to and im­pact on po­lice work and the jus­tice sys­tem.

The fact that the SSA seems less than pro­fes­sion­al in its work and leaked the in­ter­cept­ed con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Star Sab­ga and Genevieve Hadeed to the news­pa­per which first broke the news, fol­lowed by wide cir­cu­la­tion of a tape record­ing, which seems pre­med­i­tat­ed and planned, is very trou­bling.

The fall­out and struc­tur­al break­down with­in the SSA must prompt spec­u­la­tion about rogue in­ter­nal fac­tions and the unau­tho­rised mil­i­tari­sa­tion of leaked in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

This fi­as­co serves as a star­tling re­minder of prob­lems with T&T’s gov­er­nance frame­work.

A State in­tel­li­gence agency has been weaponised and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly com­pro­mised fur­ther. What such a sit­u­a­tion sig­nals is a sys­temic col­lapse where no in­sti­tu­tion­al ac­tor can emerge blame­less. The in­ju­di­cious­ness of the SSA has ex­posed every in­sti­tu­tion­al ac­tor to blame­ful ac­cu­sa­tions at a min­i­mum. These in­clude Ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship; po­lit­i­cal ac­tors, both Op­po­si­tion and Gov­ern­ment in their self-as­signed roles; even press cov­er­age and me­dia fram­ing. But the threat of sys­temic col­lapse has al­so put im­mense pres­sure on the court sys­tem, as the ne­ces­si­ty of le­gal ac­count­abil­i­ty has height­ened.

In­deed, this SSA leak fi­as­co demon­strates un­equiv­o­cal­ly that when State in­tel­li­gence ap­pa­ra­tus­es are breached, every sec­tor - from po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship to me­dia over­sight shares in the fail­ure. An SSA trans­gres­sion im­me­di­ate­ly be­comes a col­lec­tive fail­ure.

This un­der­scores the ur­gent need in T&T for non- par­ti­san in­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and rig­or­ous le­gal over­sight over the SSA.

The prob­lem is that po­lit­i­cal par­ties in this coun­try and oth­ers lean to the sub­ver­sive when out of gov­ern­ment in their quest for pow­er. And gov­ern­ments every­where find it ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to rise above nar­row par­ti­san in­ter­est as they as­sert pow­er and seek to re­tain it.