Gonzales calls for disclosure of report into Morris-Julian tragedy

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion chief whip and for­mer min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Mar­vin Gon­za­les is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to dis­close the find­ings of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the trag­ic deaths of for­mer D’Abadie/O’Meara PNM MP (now Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca) Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and two of her chil­dren, in­sist­ing that there is noth­ing in the re­port that would com­pro­mise the in­ter­ests of the fam­i­ly or the wider pub­lic.

It comes fol­low­ing re­cent com­ments by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der, who said the re­port would not be pub­li­cised and that it will be shared with the fam­i­ly up­on re­quest.

Rel­a­tives have sub­se­quent­ly called for the find­ings to be re­leased, in­sist­ing that trans­paren­cy is crit­i­cal for clo­sure.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said he has al­ways main­tained that the re­port should be made pub­lic. “There’s noth­ing in that re­port, in my per­son­al opin­ion, that jeop­ar­dis­es the fam­i­ly and pub­lic in­ter­ests if the State choos­es to dis­close,” he said.

Gon­za­les al­so took is­sue with Min­is­ter Alexan­der’s com­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly the as­ser­tion that the re­port ex­on­er­at­ed fire of­fi­cers.

Ac­cord­ing to the for­mer min­is­ter, se­lec­tive­ly dis­clos­ing as­pects of the find­ings while with­hold­ing the full re­port is in­ap­pro­pri­ate.

“What the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty re­port­ed­ly told the me­dia re­cent­ly about the re­port demon­strat­ed to me that he hasn’t sat down and read the re­port in its en­tire­ty or per­haps didn’t un­der­stand ful­ly what he read,” Gon­za­les said. “If he is not pre­pared to dis­close the con­tent of the re­port, he should not ‘cher­ry pick’ one as­pect of the find­ings to dis­close to the pub­lic. It is disin­gen­u­ous, un­pro­fes­sion­al and in­ad­vis­able.”

Ad­dress­ing ques­tions about his own ac­cess to the doc­u­ment, Gon­za­les said he no longer has pos­ses­sion of the re­port.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I can’t. It was left in that min­istry. It was sub­mit­ted to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) by Min­is­ter Hinds, and the de­lib­er­a­tions were on­go­ing,” he ex­plained.

He added that the re­port was for­mal­ly placed be­fore the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil pri­or to the gen­er­al elec­tions.

“It was of­fi­cial­ly placed be­fore the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. So that de­ci­sion was for the NSC up to the time of the Gen­er­al Elec­tions,” Gon­za­les said.

The for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter fur­ther sug­gest­ed that any dis­clo­sure to the fam­i­ly should be han­dled sen­si­tive­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, rec­om­mend­ing that a se­nior pub­lic ser­vant man­age the process.

He ar­gued that Min­is­ter Alexan­der should not be in­volved.

“Mr Alexan­der should be kept far away from that process for the good of all of us,” Gon­za­les stat­ed.

Guardian Me­dia is await­ing a re­sponse from Min­is­ter Alexan­der as to whether or not the Gov­ern­ment will change its po­si­tion on re­leas­ing the re­port pub­licly based on the re­quest by Mor­ris-Ju­lian’s fam­i­ly.