Griffith, Boodhu lament intelligence and democracy failures after coup

Gail Alexan­der

Some 36 years af­ter the Ju­ly 27, 1990 coup at­tempt, in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing is “not one step bet­ter” and Trinidad and To­ba­go is at a “de­mo­c­ra­t­ic cross­roads” un­der the cur­rent UNC Gov­ern­ment.

Those were the re­spec­tive views of for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith on in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and PNM deputy po­lit­i­cal leader San­jiv Bood­hu, who spoke about “un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic acts against the peo­ple” by the Gov­ern­ment.

Grif­fith, who said he was one of the youngest sol­diers serv­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the 1990 events, said the coup oc­curred large­ly be­cause of poor in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing.

“And 36 years lat­er, we’re not one step bet­ter.

“In 1990, I wit­nessed first-hand the mis­takes, ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and se­ri­ous short­com­ings with­in our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus. On the night of the coup, I was as­signed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with­in my com­pa­ny for se­cur­ing Camp Og­den, which had be­come the main op­er­a­tional base.

“The fol­low­ing morn­ing, I worked along­side Spe­cial Forces units con­duct­ing pa­trols through­out Port of Spain and sur­round­ing ar­eas. To my shock, we dis­cov­ered sev­er­al po­lice sta­tions wide open and com­plete­ly aban­doned, with no of­fi­cers in at­ten­dance. That left many of us to fend for our­selves while de­fend­ing the coun­try dur­ing the most crit­i­cal pe­ri­od of the in­ci­dent.”

Grif­fith said the TTPS’ in­creased pro­fes­sion­al­ism, dis­ci­pline and op­er­a­tional ap­proach would not per­mit po­lice sta­tions to be aban­doned in that man­ner to­day.

“How­ev­er, in­tel­li­gence re­mains the is­sue.”

He ex­pressed con­cern that the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the events of 1990 were left vir­tu­al­ly un­touched for more than a decade.

He said that, as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, he im­ple­ment­ed 13 of the 34 rec­om­men­da­tions.

“Since then, there have been sev­er­al Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ters, Prime Min­is­ters, Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cils. No one has lift­ed a fin­ger to re­open the file, ex­am­ine the out­stand­ing con­cerns and con­tin­ue im­ple­ment­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions in­tend­ed to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of the events of 1990,” he added.

Grif­fith said the main rec­om­men­da­tion was the es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre be­cause, in 1990, the dif­fer­ent arms of in­tel­li­gence did not work to­geth­er. He said he es­tab­lished the NOC.

“The sys­tem worked. In 2014, Trinidad and To­ba­go record­ed the largest re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crime in 31 years with­out the use of a State of Emer­gency, which al­lows an ad­min­is­tra­tion to lock up per­sons to pre­vent them from com­mit­ting crimes, then blow a trum­pet claim­ing crime has de­clined.

“Sad­ly, the present ad­min­is­tra­tion, through a Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter whose knowl­edge is lim­it­ed pri­mar­i­ly to polic­ing, has re­duced this high­ly ad­vanced sys­tem to a dis­patch cen­tre work­ing along­side E-999. Even more con­cern­ing, it’s head­ed by an in­di­vid­ual whose un­der­stand­ing of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy ap­pears clos­er to the Be­ta­max and eight-track tape era.”

Grif­fith said, “We may have cor­rect­ed some of the op­er­a­tional fail­ures wit­nessed dur­ing the coup at­tempt, in­clud­ing the aban­don­ment of po­lice sta­tions. How­ev­er, the cen­tral in­tel­li­gence fail­ure that al­lowed those events to un­fold has still not been ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed.

“The fail­ure to im­ple­ment the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry’s re­main­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, com­bined with the fail­ure to utilise the NOC as in­tend­ed, has left Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­posed.

“Thir­ty-six years lat­er, we’re not one step clos­er to en­sur­ing that what hap­pened in 1990 will nev­er hap­pen again.”

Un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic acts against the peo­ple — Bood­hu

Deputy PNM po­lit­i­cal leader Bood­hu, who walked with NAR/COP mem­ber Wen­dell Ever­s­ley to Arou­ca dur­ing Ever­s­ley’s an­nu­al Ju­ly 27 trek to the Red House yes­ter­day, said:

“To­day we should re­flect on an en­dur­ing truth: a na­tion is strongest not when pow­er is ex­er­cised with­out re­straint, but when every cit­i­zen, in­sti­tu­tion and gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to the Con­sti­tu­tion, the rule of law and the peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of dif­fer­ences.

“As a peo­ple, we’re again at a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic cross­roads. The cur­rent Gov­ern­ment at­tempts to con­vince the pop­u­la­tion that the in­fringe­ment of fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms is a jus­ti­fi­able sac­ri­fice on the al­tar of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. This is not so. Rights and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty are not mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive and are not con­sti­tu­tion­al en­e­mies.

“The ex­er­cise of sin­gu­lar and ar­bi­trary pow­er by one Min­is­ter to ef­fect the de­ten­tion of cit­i­zens with­out charge and due process of law is not right. Breach­ing cit­i­zens’ rights to pri­va­cy with­out a war­rant is not right. The in­jec­tion of fear in­to the minds of the peo­ple is not right. These are all un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic acts car­ried out by the State against the peo­ple, in­con­sis­tent with the spir­it of our con­sti­tu­tion­al foun­da­tions as a re­pub­lic.

“The lega­cy of Ju­ly 27 is not one of fear. It is one of re­silience. I’m con­fi­dent my coun­try and peo­ple will al­ways stand against in­jus­tice, un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty and un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic con­duct, re­gard­less of who per­pe­trates same,” Bood­hu added.