Boodhu calls on Alexander to resign over Hadeed PDO fiasco

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

"Re­sign now Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, Roger Alexan­der! And take At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar with you one time."

That was the ring­ing de­mand from Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment deputy leader San­jiv Bood­hu dur­ing a meet­ing at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, last night.

Bood­hu, an at­tor­ney, made the com­ment in the wake of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment's re­lease of promi­nent busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve hours ear­li­er.

Say­ing as a Trin­bag­on­ian who re­fus­es to ac­cept that fear must be­come the new nor­mal, Bood­hu said, "There comes a mo­ment in the life of every democ­ra­cy when or­di­nary pol­i­tics must give way to some­thing greater; when the ques­tion aris­es: 'what kind of coun­try do we in­tend leav­ing to our chil­dren?' That mo­ment is now."

"And the first thing I call for is the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter. The Gov­ern­ment’s ab­hor­rent mis­han­dling of the ar­rests and de­ten­tions of the Hadeeds and close to 500 peo­ple has al­ready cost cit­i­zens - who are with­out jobs, abil­i­ty to buy chil­dren's school books and pay rent - what I'm sure will be mil­lions of dol­lars in le­gal fees for im­port­ed UK coun­sel, and lo­cal UNC friends and fam­i­ly and 'State board chair­man' coun­sel."

Bood­hu added, "That's not to men­tion mil­lions in dam­ages the State may have to pay to any per­sons found to be un­law­ful­ly, un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly or un­fair­ly de­tained with­out due process and with­out cause.

"Fur­ther, the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter has made sev­er­al pub­lic mis­state­ments, be­gin­ning with him sug­gest­ing that it's the po­lice and not him that's re­spon­si­ble for is­su­ing PDOs, and his pub­lic crit­i­cism of the SoE Re­view Tri­bunal that he him­self es­tab­lished, ac­cus­ing them of not in­form­ing him of the hear­ing and not al­low­ing him to make sub­mis­sions – some­thing alarm­ing if true …

"But I have doubts about that be­cause it's my own ex­pe­ri­ence ap­pear­ing be­fore that tri­bunal, that the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter is rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys re­tained by the State at cost to you - tax­pay­ers. How­ev­er, the most sig­nif­i­cant im­pact all of this has had is that the pub­lic has lost all trust and con­fi­dence in the pro­tec­tive arms of the state as a re­sult of this scan­dal."

Bood­hu said no one in T&T feels safe to com­ment on any mat­ter of pub­lic in­ter­est any­more, "be­cause this Gov­ern­ment has demon­strat­ed by 'strong­man' an­tics that it'll stop at noth­ing to si­lence any protes­tant, dis­sent­ing or dis­agree­ing voice - any non-UNC voice, any­one that can ar­guably be con­sid­ered to have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion. Or any­one at all, just on their whim and fan­cy."

"We live in dan­ger­ous times and the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, the De­fence Min­is­ter and the Prime Min­is­ter have all con­tributed to the dan­ger that is felt and ex­pe­ri­enced by peo­ple in the street, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, even chil­dren – every­one ex­press­es con­cern and fear any­where you go!" he said.

"So I have a mes­sage: re­sign now, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter! And take the De­fence Min­is­ter with you and take the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al with you. And take the Prime Min­is­ter with you one time!"

Bood­hu said un­der the UNC's 2011 State of Emer­gency, thou­sands were ar­rest­ed with­out charge.

"Privy Coun­cil still has ap­peals be­fore it on de­tainees' claims. Now, the UNC's back for part two and it's sig­nif­i­cant­ly worse," he said.

He added, "More than a year of SoE and the mur­der rate is al­most the same as the rate for 2025. Some 57 PDOs pub­lished this month…with 464 PDOs pub­lished up to the 21st of Ju­ly 2026. If we have 464 peo­ple ar­rest­ed and de­tained un­der emer­gency pow­ers – how can we have had 232 mur­ders to date? Who you lock­ing up? It can­not be mur­der­ers."

"Are you lock­ing up those op­posed to UNC pol­i­tics? This Gov­ern­ment is us­ing and will con­tin­ue us­ing state pow­er/re­sources to per­se­cute po­lit­i­cal en­e­mies. T&T can con­clude noth­ing else," he claimed, adding peo­ple are anx­ious and ex­haust­ed by both the vi­o­lence and the un­cer­tain­ty of what comes next and who'll be locked up.

Say­ing enough was enough, Bood­hu said CEPEP and URP work­ers and oth­er un­em­ployed and many de­tained un­der SoE "are all vic­tims of po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion and po­lit­i­cal pun­ish­ment."

Bood­hu called for the de­fence of the Con­sti­tu­tion, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions, cit­i­zens' right to speak with­out fear and the right to dis­agree with­out be­ing called an en­e­my of the state.