Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley says the Government continues to change its position on the e-mail probe. He said so at an impromptu news conference at the Parliament yesterday, minutes after the House of Representatives was adjourned to next Wednesday at 1.30 pm. Rowley said he saw a broadcast of Thursday’s post-Cabinet news conference and was amazed by Attorney General Anand Ramlogan’s comments about not trusting the police to look at his cell phone and other devices as they continued investigations.
Rowley described as “hilarious” Ramlogan’s claim that if the police were to look at his devices they might subsequently give information to the Opposition. Rowley said when the matter arose of the investigation of the e-mails, allegedly sent from addresses belonging to the Prime Minister, Ramlogan and Persad-Bissessar “went out of their way to convince the population that it is the police that had the authority to do it and nobody else.”
Rowley said subsequently Ramlogan and other government officials said they had no problem with any investigator, be it the FBI or CIA. Rowley said now, after about a month had elapsed, he found it strange that Ramlogan was saying only a foreign investigator would be allowed to look at his electronic devices. Rowley said he was now witnessing “open disdain” on the police from the Government in this matter.
The Opposition leader also noted the AG’s comment about the government ministers not being suspects in the matter. “We are reading from the behaviour of the AG, speaking for his colleagues, saying to us that they are beyond the law in this country,” Rowley said. He said he was not aware of anyone in T&T who was beyond the investigative process. “They have declared themselves beyond suspiscion,” he said.
Rowley repeated his call for the e-mail servers to be inspected in order to find answers in the investigation and said until that was done, the required answers might not be found. And commenting on another matter, the payment of $6.8 million to retrieve a crashed fire truck, Rowley said the Government should be ashamed to attempt to blame Chief Fire Officer Carl Williams for the $6.8 million fire truck fiasco. He said it was inappropriate to attribute blame to a public servant when he was the lowest officer in the chain of events.
Rowley said it unfortunate that the Government was conducting an audit into the matter when it was the Cabinet which authorised the agreement. The money was paid to a contractor to retrieve a fire truck which ran off the Arima Old Road to Blanchisseuse in November last year.