Trinidad Opposition Leader pledges support to anyone facing political persecution

(Trinidad Guardian) Ac­cus­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley of “us­ing the might of his of­fice to at­tack cit­i­zens,” Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress will sup­port any­one who faces po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion.

In a state­ment yester­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said any­one who dares to speak out about their ex­pe­ri­ences un­der the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion is fac­ing per­se­cu­tion.

“We urge all cit­i­zens to stand unit­ed against this prac­tice. Dur­ing his rant, Row­ley sug­gest­ed that to ques­tion him was to threat­en the fab­ric of the so­ci­ety. This is the think­ing if dic­ta­tors, not de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed of­fi­cials,” she said.

Mak­ing ref­er­ence to Row­ley’s at­tack on for­mer di­rec­tor of in­tel­li­gence at the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) Carl­ton Den­nie, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: “Dr Row­ley com­plete­ly ig­nored calls for him to clear the air on the rea­sons for fir­ing Es­pinet and plac­ing his per­son­al lawyer at the helm of the State oil com­pa­nies, choos­ing in­stead to lam­bast the for­mer of­fi­cial of a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agency.”

She added: “We wish to re­mind the Prime Min­is­ter that free­dom of speech and ex­pres­sion are clear­ly en­shrined and pro­tect­ed rights in our democ­ra­cy, de­spite what his At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has said. The UNC will con­tin­ue to stand for all these rights af­ford­ed to all of us un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

She said peo­ple were no longer afraid of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

“What we saw to­day was a Prime Min­is­ter com­ing to terms with the fact that more peo­ple speak out as the pop­u­la­tion is no longer afraid of the swift ret­ri­bu­tion the PNM is known to mete out.

“We saw a Gov­ern­ment des­per­ate­ly grasp­ing at straws, be­com­ing ever more aware that their time is up,” she added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the ac­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter was in­dica­tive of his fail­ures.

“Kei­th Row­ley knows he has failed as a Prime Min­is­ter and by now he should have done the ho­n­ourable thing and re­signed. The NC stands res­olute­ly be­hind any cit­i­zen who is will­ing to speak out to en­sure that we cre­ate the kind of T&T we all de­sire,” she added.