PNM condemns Govt’s disregard for public on army call-out

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

While De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge says last Fri­day’s T&T De­fence Force “pre­pared­ness” drill could not have been di­vulged to the pub­lic, Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Sen­a­tor Amery Browne has slammed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment’s dis­re­gard for the con­cerns and anx­i­eties of the pub­lic, which pan­icked af­ter the sit­u­a­tion de­vel­oped over the course of a few hours.

Browne spoke af­ter Sturge’s ex­pla­na­tion that last Fri­day’s call-out of all TTDF mem­bers was in fact an as­sess­ment ex­er­cise to gauge the ef­fec­tive­ness and re­sponse time of T&T’s mil­i­tary to a pos­si­ble threat.

Sturge said be­cause of that, it wasn’t in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est to re­veal it pub­licly. If it was di­vulged while on­go­ing and be­fore com­ple­tion, he said the ex­er­cise’s ef­fi­ca­cy would have been com­pro­mised and the “much-need­ed el­e­ment of sur­prise” lost, lead­ing to an un­re­al­is­tic as­sess­ment.

The call-out of the TTDF, how­ev­er, caused pan­ic across T&T, with per­sons fear­ing that it was the re­sult of an im­pend­ing war be­tween the US and Venezuela. Pub­lic con­cerns al­so snow­balled af­ter Gov­ern­ment went to Par­lia­ment that day and ex­tend the State of Emer­gency by an­oth­er three months.

And in Par­lia­ment, when Sturge was asked by the Op­po­si­tion why the TTDF was called out, he de­clined re­ply, cit­ing a Par­lia­ment Stand­ing Or­der al­low­ing min­is­ters not to an­swer queries if they were con­trary to the pub­lic in­ter­est.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly fu­elling re­ac­tions was a Mi­a­mi Her­ald sto­ry ear­li­er that day which in­di­cat­ed the US was poised to un­der­take airstrikes against Venezue­lan mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tions linked with drug car­tels. Sub­se­quent­ly, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said he wasn’t con­sid­er­ing any strikes with­in Venezuela.

By the time Trump’s con­fir­ma­tion arose last Fri­day - and with no ex­pla­na­tion on the TTDF call-out - T&T schools and some busi­ness­es closed and pan­ic buy­ing erupt­ed. That was still oc­cur­ring in some gro­ceries up to Sat­ur­day.

The call-out of T&T’s De­fence Force was not­ed in wide in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia cov­er­age of the con­flict­ing re­ports on US airstrikes the fol­low­ing day.

Sturge sub­se­quent­ly said last Fri­day’s army ac­tiv­i­ty was an as­sess­ment drill on “ef­fec­tive­ness,” where com­mu­ni­ca­tion, co-or­di­na­tion and re­sponse time was in­volved and it end­ed on Fri­day. He said test­ing was the cul­mi­na­tion of mil­i­tary train­ing and ex­er­cis­es con­duct­ed with T&T De­fence Force by mem­bers of the USS Grave­ly war­ship, which vis­it­ed last week.

Yes­ter­day, Sturge said, “We need­ed to have the ex­er­cise in re­al-time to as­cer­tain what need­ed to be fixed in the event any­thing hap­pened.”

He said that ba­si­cal­ly ex­tend­ed to any hos­til­i­ties oc­cur­ring where Venezuela was con­cerned. While T&T is aware of its oblig­a­tions con­cern­ing refugees for ex­am­ple, he said as­pects to con­sid­er would have in­clud­ed deal­ing with cul­prits seek­ing to en­ter T&T un­der the pre­text of be­ing a refugee - crim­i­nal el­e­ments or Venezue­lan mili­tia.

Asked what was found and needs fix­ing aris­ing from the “valu­able les­son,” Sturge de­clined re­ply.

But Browne, the for­mer Cari­com and For­eign Af­fairs min­is­ter, con­demned the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling the mat­ter.

“What the Gov­ern­ment has con­firmed is its ir­re­spon­si­ble non­cha­lance at the con­cerns and anx­i­eties of the peo­ple right across T&T and be­yond,” he told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“It is in­sult­ing to the in­tel­li­gence of our cit­i­zens to posit af­ter the fact that a TTDF readi­ness ex­er­cise could on­ly be con­duct­ed against the ig­no­rance of the Prime Min­is­ter and in the com­plete ab­sence of any in­formed com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the pub­lic through­out that day.”

He added, “The sit­u­a­tion al­so con­firmed that heav­en and earth could shift be­fore our Prime Min­is­ter would deign to sub­mit her­self to a me­dia con­fer­ence to ad­dress the peo­ple of our coun­try who elect­ed her six months ago”