(Trinidad Express) Opposition Senator Fitzgerald Hinds on Sunday said National Security Minister Jack Warner used his customary “FIFA ethic” to deal with the illegal occupation of the State lands by the Highway Re-Route Movement.
Hinds said illegal squatting could only happen in two instances: if the squatter illegally occupied State lands or if they occupied privately owned lands.
“The law is very clear. If the Government felt that these persons are in illegal occupation of State lands then there is a procedure to be adopted,” he said.
“The Government could have taken the matter to court to get a ruling. Instead Mr Warner chose, with what I believe is the full backing of the Prime Minister, to go and toss the people off the land in the way he did,” Hinds said.
Hinds said Warner was seeing in the issue in “strict political terms” and was driven to “misconduct last Wednesday”.
“I suspect what may have happened is the urgency with which Mr Warner called ACP (Assistant Commissioner of Police Fitzroy) Fredericks, they would have sent the police there to ensure there was no breach of the peace,” Hinds said.
He said now with the weight of the political fall out weighing on him, Warner was now defending a second removal of the activist group by putting the responsibility on Commissioner of State Lands, Kumar Koonoolal.
“It is hardly likely that the Commissioner of State Lands would evict anyone until he is in possession of a court order. So what you are hearing here is the system saying lets do it right this time,” he said.
“With this backlash, they are quietly saying lets do it right this time, which means it was not done right the first time,” Hinds said.
Hinds likened the People’s Partnership action as that of an “elective dictatorship”.
“Elected, but behaving like the typical dictator, something that this country did not expect,” Hinds said.
“Mr Warner is just as confusing and his Prime Minister and the Cabinet in my view are just as slippery,” he said.
Hinds said while others were “shocked and disappointed” he was only disappointed.
“I was not surprised, a tiger never changes its stripes,” he said.
