More criticism for Sturge over Seetahal assassination claim

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

Ir­re­spon­si­ble!

That's how for­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams has deemed the be­hav­iour of De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, fol­low­ing Sturge's re­cent re­marks in Par­lia­ment al­leg­ing po­lice in­ac­tion con­cern­ing the 2014 mur­der of spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC.

Williams was the act­ing CoP at the time of the mur­der. He held the post from 2012 to 2016.

And for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath has slammed Sturge’s in­fer­ence that See­ta­hal's mur­der oc­curred un­der a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment.

See­ta­hal was am­bushed, blocked and killed by gun­men who shot her five shots on May 4, 2014, while en route to her Wood­brook home. Sev­er­al peo­ple were held by po­lice and charged in 2015. The mat­ter is now be­fore the court.

Dur­ing last Fri­day’s Par­lia­ment de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency, Sturge said, ”Dana See­ta­hal al­so knew she was go­ing to get killed. She knew … yes, she did. She chose not to have se­cu­ri­ty around her and she went on and… if you were in the case, you’d hear about the in­ter­cepts … there are in­ter­cepts.

“So, the po­lice is there lis­ten­ing, know­ing that a high-pro­file pros­e­cu­tor is go­ing to be killed and in­stead of do­ing what we did, you know what they did, they lis­tened and they lis­tened and they lis­tened and now she’s not here - that’s what they do. What they do and noth­ing is the same thing," Sturge said.

Op­po­si­tion PNM MP Stu­art Young, in the de­bate, point­ed out to Sturge that See­ta­hal’s mur­der oc­curred in 2014 un­der a UNC gov­ern­ment’s term.

The PNM was in Op­po­si­tion from May 2010 to Sep­tem­ber 2015, while the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar UNC/Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment was in pow­er over that 2010-2015 pe­ri­od.

Con­tact­ed on Sturge's claims, for­mer CoP Williams told Guardian Me­dia, "Politi­cians tend to be very ir­re­spon­si­ble many times when they make ut­ter­ances in Par­lia­ment. This is one ex­am­ple of an ir­re­spon­si­ble politi­cian."

He con­tin­ued, "I’d say that the Dana See­ta­hal mat­ter is one in which I was head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice at that point in time and when ut­ter­ances are made about po­lice ‘do­ing noth­ing', it would seem to be that Min­is­ter Sturge was speak­ing in Par­lia­ment loose­ly with­out think­ing.

“This mat­ter is be­fore the courts and it's long over­due for com­ple­tion. I wouldn’t want to make state­ments in an ir­re­spon­si­ble way. I’ll leave it to the court to make a de­ter­mi­na­tion of the mat­ter - I wouldn’t want to add fu­el to that fire.”

Bharath dis­missed Sturge’s in­fer­ence of the mat­ter oc­cur­ring un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment as “ei­ther a bla­tant lie or gross in­com­pe­tence.”

Bharath added,” Dana See­ta­hal was mur­dered in 2014 un­der a UNC gov­ern­ment. That is an un­de­ni­able mat­ter of pub­lic record. When elect­ed of­fi­cials dis­tort facts and ca­su­al­ly rewrite his­to­ry, it does more than just score cheap par­ti­san points. It erodes pub­lic trust in the in­sti­tu­tions that are sup­posed to safe­guard truth and ac­count­abil­i­ty, some­thing that this ad­min­is­tra­tion seems less and less con­cerned about ...

"When po­lit­i­cal iden­ti­ty be­comes so ab­solute that facts no longer mat­ter, a so­ci­ety los­es per­spec­tive of what is right and what is wrong. Truth be­comes ne­go­tiable. His­to­ry be­comes what­ev­er a po­lit­i­cal tribe finds con­ve­nient. And cit­i­zens stop de­mand­ing hon­esty from the peo­ple en­trust­ed with pow­er.”

Bharath, who held posts in Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Agri­cul­ture, Fi­nance and Trade, added, “It’s the clas­sic case of dumb­ing down a pop­u­la­tion to di­vide and rule. If we con­tin­ue down this path, we're not just ar­gu­ing about pol­i­tics, we are nor­mal­is­ing a cul­ture where lies and mis­in­for­ma­tion are re­ward­ed and in­tegri­ty is op­tion­al. In the long run, that's far more dan­ger­ous than any sin­gle lie told in Par­lia­ment.”

Bharath couldn’t an­swer on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil is­sues un­der the PP gov­ern­ment.

The head of the PP Gov­ern­ment’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in 2014 was Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar didn’t re­ply to Guardian Me­dia’s What­sApped queries on the See­ta­hal mat­ter, in­clud­ing her view on Sturge’s com­ments about the au­thor­i­ties' fail­ure. There was al­so no re­ply from NSC mem­bers of 2014, then at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Prakash Ra­mad­har and Roodal Mooni­lal.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter up to Feb­ru­ary 2015, Gary Grif­fith, is re­port­ed as say­ing that while he wasn’t ques­tion­ing Sturge’s state­ment, at no time dur­ing his tenure were any re­ports "giv­en to us" about See­ta­hal be­ing a tar­get.

Sturge didn't im­me­di­ate­ly re­ply to queries on Williams' and Bharath's crit­i­cisms.