Young, Griffith say Govt heads must roll over Hadeeds’ PDO revocations

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young and for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith are call­ing for the im­me­di­ate re­moval of Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der, fol­low­ing the re­lease of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife af­ter 30 days in cus­tody un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders with­out charge.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Young said both Alexan­der and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie must im­me­di­ate­ly re­sign—or be re­moved by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, af­ter Alexan­der re­voked the cou­ple’s PDOs yes­ter­day fol­low­ing weeks of le­gal wran­glings.

“And there should al­so be an im­me­di­ate end to the State of Emer­gency and all po­lit­i­cal tar­get­ing and per­se­cu­tion by the UNC Gov­ern­ment,” Young de­mand­ed yes­ter­day.

Young did so in a state­ment is­sued ahead of last night’s Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment pub­lic meet­ing at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, as he is out of the coun­try on busi­ness.

Young said it was clear that Gov­ern­ment has been util­is­ing the un­jus­ti­fied SoE and, in par­tic­u­lar, the min­is­te­r­i­al-is­sued Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs), “... to sup­press democ­ra­cy and to at­tack those whom they wish.”

He said T&T’s Con­sti­tu­tion nev­er in­tend­ed states of emer­gency to be used in the man­ner that has been seen since mid-2025, “... And cer­tain­ly, PDOs which are not sub­stan­ti­at­ed or sup­port­ed with ev­i­dence, but mere­ly stamped with lan­guage that the min­is­ter is of the be­lief that there is a threat to pub­lic safe­ty. What we are wit­ness­ing is not con­sti­tu­tion­al nor is it jus­ti­fi­able in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic state.

“When these ac­tions are pre­ced­ed by doc­u­ment­ed ver­bal and oth­er threats from se­nior mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment as we have seen, both in and out of Par­lia­ment, it is clear ev­i­dence of po­lit­i­cal tar­get­ing, per­se­cu­tion and pros­e­cu­tion. These ac­tions are un­prece­dent­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go and ex­ist on­ly in dic­ta­tor­ships.”

He added, “The com­plete dis­re­gard of safe­guards (which in them­selves are ar­guably not sat­is­fac­to­ry) like ig­nor­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions of the tri­bunal set up un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions was un­ac­cept­able and an­oth­er clear in­di­ca­tor of un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic be­hav­iour and dis­re­gard for due process and pro­tec­tion of the law.

“The use and abuse of rolling states of emer­gency and the weapon­is­ing of the var­i­ous arms of the State against cit­i­zens who the Gov­ern­ment sees as their op­po­nents can­not con­tin­ue.”

Grif­fith, mean­while, de­scribed the de­ci­sion as “to­tal in­com­pe­tence at the high­est lev­el”, ar­gu­ing that those re­spon­si­ble must be held ac­count­able.

He crit­i­cised Alexan­der’s de­ci­sion to au­tho­rise the de­ten­tions based on what was de­scribed as “cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence” with­out charges be­ing laid, say­ing the in­for­ma­tion should have been de­vel­oped in­to ev­i­dence ca­pa­ble of sup­port­ing crim­i­nal charges.

Grif­fith said the fail­ure to con­vert the in­tel­li­gence in­to ad­mis­si­ble ev­i­dence showed that the ba­sis for the de­ten­tions was flawed. He said in­tel­li­gence could some­times amount to lit­tle more than hearsay and ar­gued it should not be used as the sole jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for de­priv­ing cit­i­zens of their free­dom.

“This is tan­ta­mount to what takes place in a po­lice state or a dic­ta­to­r­i­al coun­try,” Grif­fith said.

He claimed the mat­ter could ex­pose tax­pay­ers to sig­nif­i­cant le­gal costs as the is­sue con­tin­ues through the courts.

Grif­fith al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the min­is­ter’s role was lim­it­ed to ap­prov­ing doc­u­ments pre­sent­ed to him, say­ing the law placed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty sole­ly on the min­is­ter.

“He is not a rub­ber stamp,” Grif­fith said.

He ar­gued that the min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing pow­ers un­der the law were ex­ten­sive, say­ing the same au­thor­i­ty could po­ten­tial­ly be used against any cit­i­zen, in­clud­ing se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials.

Grif­fith said the con­tro­ver­sy had dam­aged the Gov­ern­ment’s cred­i­bil­i­ty and could con­tin­ue to af­fect T&T’s rep­u­ta­tion be­fore the courts, the Privy Coun­cil and across the Caribbean.

He al­so com­pared the sit­u­a­tion to the Brent Thomas mat­ter un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, where he said state ac­tion con­tributed to pub­lic dis­sat­is­fac­tion with that gov­ern­ment.

Grif­fith main­tained that the is­sue stemmed from a lack of prop­er in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and said if au­thor­i­ties had suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion, it should have re­sult­ed in crim­i­nal charges.

He re­peat­ed his call for Alexan­der to be re­moved, say­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty must be ac­cept­ed and tax­pay­ers should not be left to car­ry the bur­den of the fall­out.

“The con­se­quences must not be borne sole­ly through the pock­ets of tax­pay­ers. A head must roll,” Grif­fith said.