Gonzales: Office holders must end cloak of secrecy

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les says his con­cerns sur­round­ing the Joshua Sama­roo and Ka­ia Sealy mat­ter are not about the in­de­pen­dence of the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), but about what he de­scribed as a cul­ture of se­cre­cy sur­round­ing pub­lic of­fice.

Gon­za­les’ com­ments came af­ter Sama­roo’s fam­i­ly’s at­tor­ney, Criston J Williams, moved yes­ter­day to clar­i­fy re­marks urg­ing the pub­lic to “trust the process.”

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Williams re­ject­ed claims that his com­ments were “rep­re­hen­si­ble” and in­sist­ed his re­marks had been mis­un­der­stood.

Williams stressed that al­though he rep­re­sents the fam­i­ly of the late Sama­roo, his po­si­tion re­mains that the force used by po­lice dur­ing the Jan­u­ary 2026 shoot­ing “was un­rea­son­able” and re­sult­ed in Sama­roo’s death and in­juries to Sealy.

How­ev­er, speak­ing yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said cit­i­zens now de­mand greater trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty from pub­lic of­fi­cials.

Gon­za­les said, “I do have faith in the Di­rec­tor of the Pros­e­cu­tions. My po­si­tion is the whole adage of hid­ing be­hind the cloak of se­cre­cy in or­der to pre­serve a crim­i­nal tri­al. I don’t think that in to­day’s world those prin­ci­ples ap­ply, be­cause the pop­u­la­tion, the cit­i­zens de­mand, es­pe­cial­ly in the age of so­cial me­dia, de­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy from per­sons who hold na­tion­al of­fice, even from per­sons who hold con­sti­tu­tion­al of­fice and there­fore there needs to be a cer­tain amount of lev­el­ling with the pop­u­la­tion, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the pop­u­la­tion on facts so that peo­ple’s per­cep­tion, even if it may not be en­tire­ly cor­rect, it can be cor­rect­ed once they are pro­vid­ed with a rea­son­able amount of in­for­ma­tion.

“... I think the se­cre­cy be­hind those of­fice hold­ers and the way that they op­er­ate, they need to un­der­stand that gone are the days you could re­main silent and qui­et and ex­pect peo­ple to have some sem­blance of re­spect and trust in you. It has a sym­bi­ot­ic type of arrange­ment where, in or­der for there to be trust, you need to com­mu­ni­cate and you need to be trans­par­ent with the cit­i­zens.”

Mean­while, Williams main­tained his call to “trust the process” re­ferred specif­i­cal­ly to the con­sti­tu­tion­al in­de­pen­dence of the Of­fice of the DPP, and not blind ac­cep­tance of po­lice al­le­ga­tions.

In a writ­ten re­sponse yes­ter­day, Williams said he was sur­prised to hear his state­ment was de­scribed as rep­re­hen­si­ble.

Say­ing that he acts as at­tor­ney for the Sama­roo fam­i­ly while Fay­ola Sandy acts on be­half of Sealy,” he said, “Our po­si­tion re­mains that the force used by po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing the Jan­u­ary 2026 shoot­ing was un­rea­son­able and re­sult­ed in the death of Mr Sama­roo and cat­a­stroph­ic in­juries to Ms Sealy.

“Over the past five months, we have pub­licly and for­mal­ly re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion from both the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice con­cern­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing that shoot­ing. To date, many sig­nif­i­cant ques­tions re­main unan­swered. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice has now pre­sent­ed its ver­sion of events to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, and the DPP has act­ed up­on that pre­sen­ta­tion in de­ter­min­ing that charges should be laid.”

On Tues­day, Gon­za­les crit­i­cised Williams for urg­ing cit­i­zens to “trust the process” de­spite wide­spread pub­lic scruti­ny over the po­lice han­dling of the mat­ter. He de­scribed Williams’ calls for cit­i­zens to trust the process in the face of wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed CCTV footage as an in­sult to the pop­u­la­tion.

Gon­za­les said he found it “quite cu­ri­ous” that a de­fence at­tor­ney had pub­licly moved to de­fend the ac­tions of the pros­e­cu­tion.

But fur­ther ex­plain­ing his com­ments, Williams said, “When I stat­ed that we must trust the process, I was re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to the con­sti­tu­tion­al in­de­pen­dence of the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. In Trinidad and To­ba­go, the DPP is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly in­de­pen­dent. The pur­pose of that in­de­pen­dence is to en­sure that pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al de­ci­sions are gov­erned by ev­i­dence and law, free from po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence, pub­lic pres­sure, or in­sti­tu­tion­al loy­al­ty. Every cit­i­zen, re­gard­less of back­ground or sta­tus, should want their in­de­pen­dence pro­tect­ed.

“Trust­ing the process does not mean ac­cept­ing every al­le­ga­tion made by the po­lice as true. It means trust­ing that an in­de­pen­dent pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al au­thor­i­ty will rig­or­ous­ly test the in­for­ma­tion placed be­fore it against the Pros­e­cu­tors’ Code, the avail­able ev­i­dence, and the le­gal thresh­old re­quired be­fore a pros­e­cu­tion can prop­er­ly pro­ceed.”

Williams al­so ques­tioned as­pects of the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. in­clud­ing why Sealy was not ar­rest­ed while hos­pi­talised if in­ves­ti­ga­tors ini­tial­ly pos­sessed ev­i­dence al­leg­ing she dis­charged a firearm.

He added, “In­deed, the ques­tions cur­rent­ly be­ing raised in pub­lic demon­strate the ne­ces­si­ty of hav­ing an in­de­pen­dent process. ... In the ear­li­est re­ports, there was no dis­charge of a weapon. What changed be­tween the ini­tial re­sponse of the in­ves­ti­ga­tors and the lat­er de­ci­sion to lay charges? These are not in­flam­ma­to­ry ques­tions. They are ex­am­ples of the very is­sues an in­de­pen­dent pros­e­cu­tor is ex­pect­ed to ex­am­ine ob­jec­tive­ly and care­ful­ly.”