Augustine: T&T must take threats to MPs seriously

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says it is time for Trinidad and To­ba­go to be­gin tak­ing the pro­tec­tion of its politi­cians se­ri­ous­ly, ar­gu­ing that last week’s al­leged threat against par­lia­men­tar­i­ans high­lights that se­cu­ri­ty de­tails are not a lux­u­ry, but a ne­ces­si­ty.

Au­gus­tine’s To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) has two mem­bers of par­lia­ment in the Low­er House in Joel Samp­son and David Thomas.

While ques­tions re­main over the le­git­i­ma­cy of the al­leged gang-re­lat­ed threat that prompt­ed height­ened se­cu­ri­ty at the Red House and for some gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials last Fri­day, Au­gus­tine said the mat­ter must nonethe­less be treat­ed with the ut­most se­ri­ous­ness.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia at yes­ter­day’s To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Post Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing, Au­gus­tine posit­ed, “We have seen glob­al­ly, with the most re­cent be­ing the at­tempt­ed as­sas­si­na­tion on the US Pres­i­dent, Mr. Trump, and I al­ways look in­ter­nal­ly to our op­er­a­tions, both at the THA lev­el and at the na­tion­al lev­el. I’ve al­ways asked my­self whether we have been suf­fi­cient­ly se­ri­ous about se­cu­ri­ty.”

He added, “There is an un­for­tu­nate no­tion in this space that some­how hav­ing se­cu­ri­ty is some rank or priv­i­lege, some lux­u­ry. It is not re­al­ly a lux­u­ry. When you have se­cu­ri­ty, you es­sen­tial­ly cede all of your pri­va­cy. So, it’s not a lux­u­ry at all. And we need to re­move this no­tion that some­how se­cu­ri­ty at­tached to high of­fice­hold­ers is a lux­u­ry.”

The Chief Sec­re­tary said if some­thing was to hap­pen to a high of­fice hold­er in this coun­try then there could be ma­jor im­pli­ca­tions as it re­lates to for­eign in­vestor con­fi­dence.

“How do you con­vince for­eign com­pa­nies, multi­na­tion­al, large con­glom­er­ates glob­al­ly to come and in­vest in your coun­try? They will ques­tion whether your coun­try is se­ri­ous, whether your coun­try has a se­cu­ri­ty prob­lem.”

Au­gus­tine said Trinidad and To­ba­go must ad­mit that it has a “se­cu­ri­ty prob­lem” and cred­it­ed the Gov­ern­ment for not tak­ing the safe­ty of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans light­ly.

“And I see the gov­ern­ment at­tempt­ing to do so and try­ing to bring cer­tain strong mea­sures to the Par­lia­ment. Grant­ed, they get sup­port for some, they don’t get sup­port for oth­ers. But we have to get to the point where we re­alise that pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty for high of­fice­hold­ers is re­al­ly not a lux­u­ry, but that it is some­thing that is nec­es­sary in en­sur­ing that the coun­try’s glob­al po­si­tion­ing and stand­ing re­mains.”

He said this should be done whether the of­fice hold­er is liked or not.

Au­gus­tine said yes­ter­day evening he was due to have a con­ver­sa­tion with MP Samp­son about what tran­spired last Fri­day.

Speak­ing in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Wednes­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie SC re­vealed that a spe­cif­ic gang threat the pre­vi­ous Fri­day had trig­gered a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ci­dent. As a re­sult, height­ened se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were im­ple­ment­ed to pro­tect all mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and pro­vide ad­di­tion­al pro­tec­tion to cer­tain gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

While the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er has backed his state­ment, the Op­po­si­tion be­lieves it is a “grand de­cep­tion” to pave the way for an­oth­er ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency which ends in late June.