Rowley: Radar in Tobago used to target Maduro; warns of ‘shoot first’ anti-crime policy

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley be­lieves the ev­i­dence is now clear that the Unit­ed States in­stalled the radar in To­ba­go for the sole pur­pose of cap­tur­ing de­posed Venezue­lan leader Nicolás Maduro.

And he warned that the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Gov­ern­ment will fol­low the Unit­ed States in em­brac­ing, what he called, a “shoot first” ap­proach to crime-fight­ing, one that by­pass­es the rule of law.

On the one-year an­niver­sary of his his­toric res­ig­na­tion from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Row­ley held a me­dia brief­ing at his home in Diego Mar­tin.

Speak­ing on the now-re­moved radar in To­ba­go, Row­ley said, “Un­less the Gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to say we have no fur­ther need as we had ear­li­er in the year, it is clear that this piece of mo­bile equip­ment came in­to our coun­try for a par­tic­u­lar pur­pose.”

He added, “And the pur­pose had very lit­tle to do with nar­co-traf­fick­ing. Nar­co-traf­fick­ing is the tool to bring about the po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vring. The po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vring is over.”

Row­ley claimed that the Unit­ed States had al­ready achieved its ob­jec­tives in Venezuela and was now shift­ing its tone to praise co­op­er­a­tion with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment.

He ar­gued that with Maduro now de­tained in New York, Trinidad and To­ba­go was be­ing left to “talk non­sense” about solv­ing its crime prob­lem through the use of a US-in­stalled radar.

The for­mer PM al­so ques­tioned why the Gov­ern­ment al­lowed the radar to be re­moved if, in fact, it was help­ing with crime re­duc­tion.

“Be­cause if we get such great ben­e­fit that 42 per cent of mur­ders have gone down be­cause of the US be­ing here on radar, where are they go­ing? Don’t you want to get to ze­ro? But the orig­i­nal ob­jec­tive, the po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vring, has been suc­cess­ful. So they don’t need us any­more.”

Mean­while, Row­ley claimed that the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion to sign T&T on­to the Do­ral Char­ter and join the Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion (AC­CC) sig­nals the emer­gence of a new crime-fight­ing ap­proach, one that, he claimed, op­er­ates out­side the bounds of the rule of law.

“If it is that our At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, on our be­half and our Prime Min­is­ter, on our be­half, ac­cept­ing that this war that we are in, it is okay to kill peo­ple on the ocean on sus­pi­cion, isn’t it eas­i­er to kill peo­ple on land on the same sus­pi­cion? When does that pol­i­cy end?”

He be­lieves law en­force­ment of­fi­cials will be­gin mod­el­ling their op­er­a­tions on this ap­proach.

“You now have a pol­i­cy that it’s okay to kill peo­ple in the wa­ter with­out ref­er­ence to any­thing which is ju­di­cial­ly sound. I’m putting you all on no­tice now that that is a clear in­duce­ment for our se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices to kill peo­ple on land.” Row­ley said this coun­try is grap­pling with an is­sue he termed “colo­nial­ism vs im­pe­ri­al­ism.” And he said it was on­ly through the grace of God that this coun­try’s align­ment with the US did not lead to the worst.

“Af­ter all the fool­ish­ness that our Gov­ern­ment did in ditch­ing our non-aligned pol­i­cy and be­com­ing a vir­tu­al com­bat­ant against Venezuela, just ask your­self, had there been a hot war with Venezuela? Why do you think that we would have been dif­fer­ent to Bahrain and Dubai and who­ev­er else the Ira­ni­ans are strik­ing now? Tell me.”

Row­ley said as prime min­is­ter, he was al­ways up­front with the na­tion and held reg­u­lar me­dia brief­in­gs to take ques­tions on de­ci­sions his gov­ern­ment took. He is now won­der­ing when the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter will do the same.