FORMER police commissioner Gary Griffith is challenging the Prime Minister to make public the findings of the controversial firearm user’s licence (FUL) audit, anywhere but the Parliament.
Griffith said he had nothing to hide, but wants the report to be made public in a place where legal consequences for slander and defamation could follow, not in Parliament, which is covered by qualified or absolute privilege from defamation claims for damages.
On Tuesday, Griffith received an injunction which restrains Dr Rowley from releasing the report, or any part of it, in Parliament until the end of Griffith's challenge of the legality of the decision to set up a committee of retired police to look into the police’s FUL process.
An appeal has since been filed by the State “to correct errors of the judge.” A date for the appeal has not yet been set.
In a statement on Wednesday, the former top cop said, “This is clearly another attempt to besmirch my character, and it is to perhaps focus on legal firearms which the public cares little about, to distract us from illegal firearms in the hands of criminals, and the fact that billions have been lost to corruption by agents of this government.
“Not about justice in any way, because if it were, Keith Rowley would have given the reports to the TTPS, PCA, DPP’s Office or any other investigative body, instead of withholding it for eight months as he did with the Barrington report, only sharing it with the former chair of the collapsed PSC, who he just happened, by coincidence, to meet at President’s House on the day she delivered the merit list for the appointment of a new commissioner to the President.”
Dr Rowley has denied any interference in the withdrawal of the merit list by former PSC chairman Bliss Seepersad, but has admitted to meeting her at President’s House to relate information arising out of the audit which he said he felt was pertinent to the work of the commission.
The Seepersad-led PSC collapsed soon after.
In his statement, Griffith said it was clear the attack against him was political and one that could only be made in Parliament because there it would have no legal consequences.
“So I make a commitment as political leader of the NTA, that I will do everything to ensure that once in government, no one will have the opportunity to besmirch the names of any citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, without legal consequences.”
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