(Trinidad Express) Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar yesterday denied that she had sent or received any of the Section 34-related conspiracy e-mails read out by Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley.
The e-mails formed the basis of Rowley’s no-confidence motion in the Prime Minister and the Government.
Persad-Bissessar said she has already written to acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams, calling for an investigation into the cyber issue and to “take action as required by the law”.
In the midst of the debate in the Parliament chamber at the International Waterfront Centre in Port of Spain yesterday, Persad-Bissessar called a media conference to dismiss the alleged electronic communication between her and high-ranking Government officials, including Attorney General Anand Ramlogan.
“These e-mails, I want to say, are a total fabrication as far as they implicate my name and I am advised by the Honourable Attorney General and by Captain Gary Griffith that the e-mails that purport to be to and from them are also fabrications,” she said.
Though Persad-Bissessar admitted that the e-mail address in question, kamlapb1@gmail.com, belonged to her, she said those e-mails were not written by her hand and said she even checked her computer and those e-mails were not in her sent or received files.
“I have nothing I have ever received from an anan@gmail.com. I have nothing I have sent. I searched my computer,” she said.
“Those e-mails were never sent by me,” Persad-Bissessar said, adding that she did not believe that her e-mail was “hacked” in the traditional sense.
“My e-mail address is public, I have never changed it from before I was Prime Minister after I was Prime Minister,” she said.
She said despite the fact that they were “fabricated” e-mails, the Police Commissioner should still have copies to assist his investigation especially considering the serious, criminal allegations in the e-mails. She said she was surprised that Rowley did not seek to make the documents available to Williams when he first got hold of them several months ago.
“I am very surprised that they were not handed over to the office holder that would have been able to cause the investigation to be done and to act according to law,” she said.
“Having come to attention today, I have taken the liberty of writing to Commissioner Williams attaching the documents which were handed to us at the Parliament by the leader of the Opposition and I have written to the police in this regard,” Persad-Bissessar said.
The Prime Minister said she was “saddened” that Rowley would seek to use fabricated e-mails as the basis for his fourth no-confidence motion against the Government.
“He allowed himself to come to the Parliament with only these e-mails, without even seeking to verify,” she said adding that Rowley’s entire presentation for the debate was based on a “total fabrication”.
“A motion is not something you do every Monday morning and every Monday morning you show me your motion. It is very, very serious,” Persad-Bissessar said.
Meanwhile, Local Government Minister Dr Surujrattan Rambachan says he had just returned to Trinidad and Tobago from a trip abroad and did not hear the allegations made by Rowley in the Parliament about a series of e-mails on the Section 34 fiasco.
Asked, however, by reporters during the tea-break of yesterday’s sitting of the Parliament if the e-mail address bearing the “surujrambachan” quoted by Rowley in the Parliament is his email address, Rambachan said, “It is.”
He then added, “I will have to read what Mr Rowley says… I don’t know (what) Dr Rowley is talking about… as I said, I just came in.”
He said “everybody knows” his e-mail address surujrambachan@hotmail.com.
