Gonzales knocks Alexander for secrecy on new travel platform

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty Mar­vin Gon­za­les has slammed the Gov­ern­ment for re­fus­ing to dis­close the cost of the new on­line Ar­rival/De­par­ture Card (ADC) plat­form, ac­cus­ing Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der of us­ing “na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty” as a shield for in­com­pe­tence.

The crit­i­cism comes one day af­ter Alexan­der host­ed a me­dia con­fer­ence to an­nounce the roll­out of the new on­line plat­form, but re­fused to di­vulge the cost of the project, cit­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tions.

Gon­za­les yes­ter­day la­belled the in­vo­ca­tion of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as “disin­gen­u­ous,” sug­gest­ing it is be­ing used to hide a lack of in­for­ma­tion or “rank in­com­pe­tence” rather than to pro­tect sen­si­tive op­er­a­tions.

Gon­za­les said, “There’s noth­ing that the Gov­ern­ment can­not di­vulge to the coun­try that has na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tion. I think it is the Gov­ern­ment con­ve­nient­ly, es­pe­cial­ly Min­is­ters (Wayne) Sturge and (Roger) Alexan­der, us­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tions to hide their rank in­com­pe­tence.”

In Gon­za­les’ view, Alexan­der may have been un­aware of the cost and should have sim­ply said so.

He added, “It was clear to me that he didn’t have the in­for­ma­tion at hand, and the min­is­ter should have been hon­est enough and say, ‘well, I don’t have that in­for­ma­tion at hand. It’s some­thing that I can pro­vide at a lat­er date or a lat­er time’. But to con­ve­nient­ly in­voke na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tion is quite disin­gen­u­ous in these cir­cum­stances, and it demon­strates his in­com­pe­tence and his in­abil­i­ty to un­der­stand his role as a min­is­ter.”—KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER