Boodhu questions whether Hadeed detention linked to tax criticism

PNM deputy po­lit­i­cal leader San­jiv Bood­hu is ques­tion­ing whether busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed's re­cent de­ten­tion was linked to his pub­lic crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment's tax­a­tion poli­cies.

Speak­ing at a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing at the Mara­bel­la Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Thurs­day night, Bood­hu warned that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion was cre­at­ing the im­pres­sion that it was dan­ger­ous to op­pose the Gov­ern­ment.

Bood­hu point­ed to the se­quence of events sur­round­ing Hadeed's de­ten­tion and ar­gued that it sent a trou­bling mes­sage to the wider pub­lic.

"Cer­tain busi­ness peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed," Bood­hu said. "This is short­ly af­ter the same per­son who's been ar­rest­ed, now in cus­tody, crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment's tax­a­tion pol­i­cy."

"He has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment's tax­a­tion pol­i­cy and next thing you know, he's jailed. Locked up."

Bood­hu said that as far as he was aware, no charges had yet been laid against Hadeed.

The PNM deputy leader was re­fer­ring to busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, who was de­tained along with his wife this week as part of an on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Po­lice have not pub­licly dis­closed de­tails of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and, up to Thurs­day evening, no charges had been an­nounced.

Bood­hu ar­gued that re­gard­less of the facts of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the per­cep­tion be­ing cre­at­ed was that crit­ics of the Gov­ern­ment risked be­com­ing tar­gets.

"The mes­sage that the pub­lic re­ceives is very, very sim­ple," he said.

"It is dan­ger­ous to dis­agree with this UNC Gov­ern­ment."

He claimed the mes­sage ex­tend­ed be­yond politi­cians and busi­ness lead­ers.

"If you have a dif­fer­ent view, if you have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion, if you are a re­porter and you re­port some­thing that is dif­fer­ent to what they want you to re­port, it is dan­ger­ous for you."

"It is dan­ger­ous not to sup­port every­thing that they say or they do."

Bood­hu said that per­cep­tion was par­tic­u­lar­ly dam­ag­ing be­cause it un­der­mined con­fi­dence in the in­de­pen­dence of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

"The mes­sage that the pub­lic re­ceives is that the Gov­ern­ment is di­rect­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice," he said.

"And let me be clear, I have no ev­i­dence that that is the case. But the per­cep­tion that the Gov­ern­ment builds in the minds of the pub­lic is very, very dan­ger­ous."

He ar­gued that both the re­al­i­ty and pub­lic per­cep­tion of an in­de­pen­dent po­lice ser­vice were es­sen­tial to main­tain­ing con­fi­dence in law en­force­ment.

"The per­cep­tion can nev­er be, should nev­er be, that the Cab­i­net is con­trol­ling or di­rect­ing the po­lice to do any­thing at all," Bood­hu said.

"Oth­er­wise, the Gov­ern­ment is set­ting up the po­lice to fail. They are set­ting up the po­lice to be mis­trust­ed by the peo­ple of this coun­try."

Turn­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion, Bood­hu main­tained that op­er­a­tional polic­ing rests sole­ly with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and not the po­lit­i­cal ex­ec­u­tive.

"The TTPS is not con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly de­signed to be the en­force­ment arm of the po­lit­i­cal par­ty that oc­cu­pies Gov­ern­ment," he said.

"It is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly de­signed to pro­tect and serve all of us, re­gard­less of which po­lit­i­cal par­ty is in of­fice."

He not­ed that Sec­tion 123A of the Con­sti­tu­tion gives the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice ex­clu­sive au­thor­i­ty over op­er­a­tional mat­ters, in­clud­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, ar­rests, de­ploy­ment of of­fi­cers and the al­lo­ca­tion of in­ves­tiga­tive re­sources.

"It is the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice that must de­cide whether to in­ves­ti­gate, who to in­ves­ti­gate, whether to ar­rest, how to al­lo­cate in­ves­tiga­tive man­pow­er and re­sources, how and when to de­ploy po­lice of­fi­cers," Bood­hu said.

"All of those things are un­der the sole re­mit and con­trol of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, not any po­lit­i­cal par­ty that tem­porar­i­ly oc­cu­pies the ma­jor­i­ty of the seats in Par­lia­ment."

Bood­hu said the framers of the Con­sti­tu­tion de­lib­er­ate­ly in­su­lat­ed the po­lice ser­vice from po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence be­cause his­to­ry had shown the dan­gers of gov­ern­ments con­trol­ling op­er­a­tional polic­ing.

He al­so crit­i­cised re­cent com­ments by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency, say­ing they con­tributed to the per­cep­tion that cer­tain sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion were be­ing sin­gled out.

Bood­hu ques­tioned the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's ref­er­ences to a par­tic­u­lar "per­cent­age" of the pop­u­la­tion in re­la­tion to re­voked Unit­ed States visas, ar­gu­ing that peo­ple from "every race, class, colour and creed" had re­port­ed­ly lost their visas.

He said the com­bi­na­tion of those pub­lic state­ments and Hadeed's de­ten­tion was fu­elling pub­lic con­cern, even though he stopped short of al­leg­ing po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

"I have no ev­i­dence that that is the case," he re­peat­ed.

"But the per­cep­tion that the Gov­ern­ment builds in the minds of the pub­lic is very, very dan­ger­ous."