Government Senator attorney Larry Lalla says the police must stop twiddling their thumbs and release the Emailgate report to the public.
Lalla was speaking during his contribution to the debate on the Bail Amendment Bill in the Senate yesterday.
He said he wished that his former classmate PNM Senator Fitzgerald Hinds, rather than engaging in old talk, would ask the police to produce the report on the Emailgate scandal.
Purported e-mails read out by Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley in Parliament in May last year sought implicated Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and other high-ranking government officials in a plot.
The e-mails appeared after the Opposition claimed the Government, through the Section 34 fiasco, attempted to change legislation that would free jailed UNC financiers.
Google has said the e-mails are fake. They were also passed on to the police for investigation but, to date, no report has been produced.
Yesterday, Lalla joined the chorus of voices calling for the report to be released.
Noting the whole country wanted to know, he demanded: “We want it now. Do it now.”
He said Rowley used the Office of the Opposition Leader to make boldfaced, scandalous accusations, including murder, against government officials.
“Was there an abuse of the Office of the Opposition Leader?” he asked.
Lalla was responding to Hinds who he said had the audacity to say institutions in the country broke down under the People’s Partnership Government.
“For 40 years the PNM ruled but there were no broken institutions,” Lalla said.
“But come May 2010, all institutions broke down.”
He said Terrence Farrell, former deputy Central Bank governor, was held up as an exemplar of sound institutional management by the Opposition. Lalla asked where was Farrell when people were making off with hundreds of thousands of depositors’ money at Clico.
There were people who put up a façade of independence but shot politically from the shadows, Lalla informed the Upper House.
“I wonder about Terrence Farrell. If the Central Bank Governor (Jwala Rambarran) sneezes too hard he complains in the newspapers.
“The question has to be asked whether Terrence Farrell is a political sniper.”
Lalla said it appeared all was hunky dory under the PNM but governments changed and, suddenly, all institutions had broken down.
“Do you know why? Because it’s PNM country,” he said.
He asked what Farrell had to say about the Police Complaints Authority.
“A very senior lawyer allows himself to be nominated (to head the PCA) but does not see it fit to tell the President he’s a witness for the Opposition Leader in a matter brought against him by the attorney general.”
Lalla said he was heartened that Hinds, after all the old talk, was wholeheartedly supporting the bill, since it was the legislature’s right to make laws.
The role of the court was to interpret the law, he said. See Page A14