IN NATIONS administered by governments that have scant respect for the fundamental rights and personal dignity of its inhabitants, the notorious system of illegal spying, including interceptions of phone and email messages, can develop and prevail with impunity to the sufferings of normally law-abiding citizens.
Indeed, such undemocratic practices can come to be cynically accepted as a norm, with all the negative and dangerous consequences for citizens and the nation state in general.
The people of Guyana who have had to endure, for many years, the consequences of undemocratic and degrading, governance under the People’s National Congress, can well recall what it meant to have had a party in power, based on repeatedly stolen elections, and whose guiding philosophy was supremacy of party and its maximum leader over the parliament and all State institutions.
That is why, not just Guyana, but its CARICOM partners and all nations claiming commitment to democratic governance and the rule of law, must be ever vigilant against the hatching, nurturing and arresting of policies and programmes that make a mockery of constitutional guarantees of fundamental rights.
These would extend to ensuring basic rights of the individual and against the undermining of the Rule of Law by illegal wiretappings and other unlawful practices under the guise of safeguarding ‘national security’.
The shocking discovery of a scandalous scheme of political spying in our CARICOM partner, Trinidad and Tobago, that’s currently provoking anger and shame, should serve as a compelling and timely reminder for vigilance against any system of unlawful spying.
Where measures considered essential to ensure protection of the wider security interests of the Nation State against persons and activities of interest, these must be grounded and implemented on the basis of orders by judges of an independent judicial system.
In short, a court order must first be obtained before engaging in interceptions of any form of private communications, wire-tapping, email or else.
The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, otherwise occupied in explaining her government’s policy on emergency aid to Community partners, has disclosed to parliament on Friday the very troubling details of a network of illegal spying activities by the previous People’s National Movement administration of then Prime Minister Patrick Manning.
Prime Minister Persad’s disclosure was all the more shocking in its revelation in that not just political opponents of the then PNM government were, since 2005, subjected to illegal interceptions of their communications.
So also were even MPs of the PNM who, like the party’s current leader and Leader of the Opposition, Keith Rowley, were known to have had disagreements with the Prime Minister on policies of governance.
Much more startling was the disclosure by the Prime Minister that under the previous Manning administration, the ‘spying politics’ had spread to affect the highest levels of State personalities.
Spawned by a network of named agencies, in particular the ‘Secret Intelligence Agency (SIA)’, the spying epidemic was to also creep into conversations of the Head of State, President George Maxwell, and then Chief Justice, Satnarine Sharma. Nor was the Integrity Commission spared.
The people of an established democracy, such as Trinidad and Tobago, who freely elect their governments at periodic elections, and are known to be committed to the independence of the judiciary and Rule of Law, should never have had to suffer the shame and indignity of an illegal spying system as disclosed last Friday  by Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar.
We will, therefore, continue to monitor unfolding developments.