Only a few had seen this coming. Wanting match and dapper in a blue go well with with crimson striped tie, Trinidadian Prime Minister Keith Rowley dropped a political bombshell on his twin island republic with Tobago this week by revealing plans by the state’s Strategic Companies Company (SSA) to type a coup and presumably change his administration.
The extremely controversial spy and intelligence gathering company had been within the nationwide highlight for a lot of the previous 12 months following a sequence of scandals involving corruption, nepotism and even the existence of “a cult” within the group that was apparently devoted to altering the governing Folks’s Nationwide Motion (PNM) by drive. On the time of his revelations, Rowley was laying the outcomes of a probe in parliament following a protracted audit of company operations.
“Shockingly, the audit found that the previous SSA director initiated the procurement of high-grade army bolt-action rifles, full with probably the most trendy silencers and different equipment. The SSA was engaged in coaching specifically chosen questionably employed personnel within the ability of using such weapons.’ He additionally mentioned that the company had established a extremely militarized and educated tactical response unit however authorities are not sure of what precisely it did. “Why would an intelligence-gathering group, with a mandate to gather and share info with operational items in different regulation enforcement and protection businesses, discover it essential to secretly have an operational unit of that nature and magnitude?”
Detailing the outcomes of the audit, the prime minister mentioned that nobody can account for the whereabouts of not less than 70,000 rounds of ammunition that had been below the management of the company. Authorities are additionally baffled as to why ammunition purchases had moved from 8,000 rounds in 2017 to 100,000 by 2022. Its inventory of weapons moved, as effectively, from 24 handguns in 2016 to 103 by 2022.
He informed fellow lawmakers that the cupboard had by no means accepted any funding for prime powered weapons with the newest silencers. “This didn’t stop the SSA from making half fee for military-grade weapons with suppression capabilities.”
The oil and gas-rich CARICOM nation has a well-defined historical past linked to an tried coup by a Muslim group in July of 1990 and a Black Energy rebellion involving troopers and civilians in 1970 so authorities are taking the newest proof severely. Then Prime Minister Ray Robinson was shot by coup makers after they had invaded parliament throughout a stay session. Different state entities have been attacked together with the state tv station, police amenities and different buildings. A big a part of industrial Port of Spain was additionally destroyed by hearth and affected by looting.
