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Assassination plot - A fiasco for govt
Published:
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Tony Fraser
When Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar accepted the advice of Commissioner of Police Dwayne Gibbs that the police had uncovered a plot that was hatched to assassinate her and three of her senior ministers and adds her political responsibility to it, then that decision becomes her own. When she took on board the wisdom of her national security adviser, Gary Griffith, that she should make information on the plot public, then she also takes political responsibility for the disclosure and the decision is then her own. In addressing the news conference on November 24, Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar dem-onstrated in clear view of the national community that she had indeed grabbed hold of that political responsibility and added the considerable weight of the office of the Prime Minister to it.
If the CoP was careful, disclosing little more than the police had uncovered the assassination plot and had detained 12 people, Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar contextualised the plot in relation to her Government’s boldness to establish the state of emergency and curfew. “These nefarious elements…are finally confronted by a government which possess the political will, courage and strength of conviction to stoutly defend and protect the citizens of the country,” said the Prime Minister in a fighting mood, convinced of the political rightness of her course of action. She went further to say that the plot had been the result of the taking off the streets illegal drugs to the value of $1.5 billion, 13,000 plus rounds of ammunition, 173 guns and other assorted weapons.
On the related issue of making an official public announcement of the plot at a time when the police had gathered little evidence to substantiate the claim, there has been what can only be a deliberate attempt to confuse the Government’s taking of the information gleaned by the security forces seriously (unlike what was said to have been done in 1990), and the second decision to make the information public. The two decisions cannot be conflated; they are separate and apart. So the Prime Minister and her Government had every right to take the intelligence gathered by the police seriously; but then had the option of when to make the information known to the public. On the day before the official announcement, there was the obviously orchestrated leak of information to the media. This strategy then sought to give legitimacy to the public statements of November 24.
Question is: why did Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her Government, those who had prior knowledge of the announcements, take this risky course of action to place the reputation of the Prime Minister and her Government on the line? There will always be speculation on such questions about the thinking of politicians. What has been demonstrated quite clearly is that politicians always have a hidden agenda to major decisions taken. Here is one possible motivation. The SoE was coming to an end and there was quite an amount of scepticism about the value of declaring the emergency. There was quite a large segment of public opinion as displayed on all media, conversations in public places, feeling that nothing fundamental was achieved by way of dismantling the gangs and smashing of the criminal culture.
Government, aware of this vein of opinion among segments of the population (reportedly even within the Cabinet), both the aligned and the non-partisan, saw in the reported assassination plot justification enough for the implementation of the SoE and an irresistible propaganda opportunity to “palance” with, and the Prime Minister grabbed it with both hands. And it must be remembered that the first known justification for the declaration of the emergency, the claim that because the security forces had intercepted a major drug bust there would be reaction that would make 1990 look like Sunday school time, remains an outstanding doubt.
True or false the announcement of the alleged assassination plot was an opportunity to boast that so successful had the emergency been that the Government had the drug dealers on the run and desperate enough for them to want to eliminate the source of their pain of losses and strife. Clearly little time was spent on thinking the matter through and allowing the security forces to unearth the hard evidence before running with the announcement. Try as they may to spin around this debacle of the alleged assassination plot, lay blame on who they wish to choose, a hapless CoP, a diabolical and anti-PP cabal in the intelligence forces, “no water is going to wash” the Prime Minister clean of this disaster. Security officials may advise and recommend, ultimately the leader takes political action and responsibility for such action.
As the Americans say, “the buck stops here” at the door of the head of executive power, the Prime Minister. Incidentally, or not too incidentally, the tenure of CoP Gibbs must surely be threatened by the outturn of the events. And that is also instructive on the vulnerability of a police commissioner who is on a contract that amounts to no more than a short leash that can be jerked around to suit the will of a government in office. What of the legislation that needs amending to allow for a local commissioner to be appointed with full tenure? Is the Government going to await another crisis moment to then continue the appointment of a CoP on a short-term contract?
Quality communication with the public remains a major deficiency of the People’s Partnership Government. Vital to the communication process is the fundamental premise from which commu- nication is launched. Clearly too much of the communication is hinged around attempting to distort reality and imbedded in Anancy politics. In the Reshmi affair, which has never been transparently explained, this young woman’s appointment was clearly based on some form of political partisanship. Therefore all the expected checks and balances in selecting someone for such an important and sensitive job were ignored. Having been found out, then no effort was spared to spin a way out of the predicament, including attempting to beat the media into submission to “move on.” As the Government spends its political currency like millionaires, the trade union movement is lining up against what it must believe is a government weakened by the assassination plot fiasco.
