Govt, Opposition MPs spar over AG’s security threat claim

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and Op­po­si­tion MPs have con­tend­ed that de­spite re­cent claims by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie that a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ci­dent linked to a gang mem­ber last Fri­day, prompt­ed height­ened pro­tec­tion for mem­bers of par­lia­ment and se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, they don’t feel un­safe or alarmed.

Days af­ter Je­re­mie told par­lia­ment that ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures had been trig­gered fol­low­ing the al­leged threat, the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans yes­ter­day said they had nei­ther been in­formed of any di­rect threats nor ob­served any no­tice­able in­crease in se­cu­ri­ty.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee dis­missed sug­ges­tions that he was the sub­ject of any threat, though, in­sist­ing he felt com­plete­ly safe. “No, no, no. I’m love­ly, so no­body want­ed, I don’t have those kinds of things on me,” Lee said in re­sponse to ques­tions on whether he was the min­is­ter who had been threat­ened.

Asked if he felt safe en­ter­ing and leav­ing Par­lia­ment, Lee replied, “Very safe. Yes, I al­ways, I dri­ve my­self.”

Asked if he had height­ened his own per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty, Lee said: “Why? No, there’s no threat against David Lee.”

He al­so said he was un­aware of any spe­cif­ic threat last Fri­day, say­ing, “I have not had any threats against my life. I can on­ly speak for David Lee.”

Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, David Nakhid, echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, say­ing there was no no­tice­able in­crease in se­cu­ri­ty around Par­lia­ment.

“As far as we’re con­cerned, we con­tin­ue to move with­out se­cu­ri­ty. I think most peo­ple move with­out se­cu­ri­ty,” Nakhid said.

He cau­tioned against what he de­scribed as ex­ces­sive alarmism sur­round­ing the is­sue.

“We have to be care­ful about the hy­per­bole sur­round­ing these things be­cause peo­ple are, right now, on edge. We have to be care­ful not to make things worse. I think every­thing is as safe as it could be.”

On claims by Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les that the AG’s com­ments were in­tend­ed to jus­ti­fy an ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency, Nakhid said, “I wouldn’t even com­ment on that,”

Gon­za­les, how­ev­er, has dou­bled down on his crit­i­cism, ac­cus­ing Je­re­mie of man­u­fac­tur­ing fear to pre­pare the pub­lic for a pos­si­ble ex­ten­sion of the SoE. He fur­ther la­belled the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al a “patho­log­i­cal liar” and “a dis­grace to the of­fice of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.”

Gon­za­les ar­gued that Gov­ern­ment’s re­liance on emer­gency pow­ers re­flect­ed an ab­sence of any co­her­ent crime strat­e­gy.

Op­po­si­tion MP Bri­an Man­ning al­so ques­tioned the AG’s ac­count.

“I think the pop­u­la­tion had a very dif­fi­cult time be­liev­ing his sto­ry. Every time they seem to be un­der pres­sure, they pull out this tired old sto­ry, but there’s no ev­i­dence to sup­port what is be­ing said,” Man­ning said.