The failure of Rowley's national security ministry.

The High Court’s ruling against the past government’s Ministry of National Security should be embarrassing to anyone that still pretends it takes transparency, human rights, or basic competence seriously. Justice Devindra Rampersad did not “criticize delays” in some vague administrative sense. He found that the ministry breached its statutory obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, meaning it failed the law, not merely public expectations.  PM Rowley stated that he supported the Coast Guard member who shot an unarmed infant.

Let’s be clear about what the court said happened. A Venezuelan mother, Darielvis Eliannys Sarabia Morillo, asked for information after a Coast Guard operation in February 2022 left her newborn son dead from gunfire and left her injured badly enough to require emergency surgery. She submitted five FOIA requests in March and April 2022, including for her child’s autopsy report and records about the operation. These are not frivolous requests. They go to the heart of state power: the use of force, accountability, and the public’s right to know what happened in T&T's waters.

And what did the Ministry of National Security do? According to the judgment, it failed to comply with the 30-day deadline under Section 15 of the Act and failed to give substantive responses. Worse, the ministry attempted to dodge its duty by effectively telling the applicant to try other agencies, a bureaucratic pass-the-parcel while a grieving mother begged for answers. The judge put it plainly: a letter that amounts to “ask someone else” is not a substantive decision. That line should haunt every senior official who thinks they can hide behind paperwork and call it governance.

This wasn’t just inefficiency; it was a posture, delay, deflection, and denial by process. FOIA exists precisely because public authorities will otherwise stall until public interest fades and ordinary people give up. When the court has to order the ministry to determine outstanding requests by a deadline, that is not routine administration. That is the judiciary stepping in because an arm of the state refused to do what the law already required.

And the moral dimension is impossible to ignore. If the state wants the public to trust its security services, then the least it can do, the bare minimum, is respond lawfully and promptly when a child is killed during a state operation. Instead, the ministry’s conduct, as described in court, reads like an institution more concerned with shielding itself than serving the public.

This is why many citizens have stopped believing official statements and press conferences. They sense, correctly, that “accountability” often ends where inconvenience begins. The ministry did not merely mishandle a file. It failed a legal duty, failed a traumatized mother, and failed the country’s obligation to be transparent when lethal force is involved.

The public should not accept this as normal. There should be consequences for a ministry that cannot meet the most basic requirements of the Freedom of Information Act without a judge forcing compliance. Anything less tells us that in Trinidad and Tobago, transparency is treated as optional, especially when the questions are hardest and the stakes are life and death.

The Consequence: the PNM was destroyed in the election.

The mother was accepted in a foreign country.

Sarge