(Trinidad Express) People’s National Movement (PNM) leader Dr Keith Rowley yesterday said the nation should be concerned that National Security Minister Jack Warner would admit he hired a photographer to spy on his (Rowley’s) office.
“I take umbrage to the blatant falsehoods told by the Minister of National Security,” Rowley said at the party’s bi-monthly media conference at his Port of Spain office.
“What manner of man is this?” he asked.
“What should concern the nation is that a man like this, who has control of the State’s agencies, to want to direct those agencies, to want to keep a spy on the office of the Leader of the Opposition to make a point,” he asked.
“If we had any concerns about how this minister would use the State’s resources against innocent citizens, I think this is,” Rowley said.
Rowley held up a newspaper clipping in which Warner made the admission, saying that proving the office was open or closed was a simple enough matter and did not require a spy hired through either Government resources or Warner’s own pocket.
“I want to make it abundantly clear that I as the MP (Member of Parliament) for Diego Martin West, I got out of my house at 7 a.m. during the rains, and I was out until 6 in the afternoon. I had no lunch, I had no dinner,” he said.
Rowley said he traversed the length and breadth of his constituency and spent most of the day comforting affected residents.
“I was not in my office because the flooding and the landslides did not take place in my office, and my staff was being mobilised to respond,” he said.
Rowley said by Sunday, after the initial flooding, his office was open and acted as a distribution point for food and other donations.
“It is ridiculous for the Member for, wherever he is from, Chaguanas West, the Minister of National Security, acting Prime Minister, to be making a public issue of the fact that Parliament staff was not in the office in the night,” he said.
“I don’t want to know what requirement there is for Parliament staff to be in the office in the night to so attract the attention of the Minister of National Security,” he added.
He called on Warner to focus on the job he was hired to do and not on him.
“I don’t know on what basis this Minister of National Security could be so economic with the truth,” he said.
Rowley also took Warner to task for downplaying the crime rate in the country and trying to convince the country that the facts were being sensationalised by the media.
“I find that absolutely astounding,” he said.
Rowley said he was also concerned that under this Government, the office of the Commissioner of Police seemed to be “receding further and further over the horizon”.
He said a year ago when the State of Emergency was declared, the then commissioner of police, Dwayne Gibbs, was out of the country.
“This UNC Government sees the office of the Commissioner of Police as irrelevant in its thrust against crime,” he said.
