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For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les says he doesn’t be­lieve that se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tions due to the State of Emer­gency (SoE) were the rea­son the Gov­ern­ment can­celled this year’s In­de­pen­dence Day mil­i­tary pa­rade. He is now urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to come for­ward and ex­plain their rea­son­ing.

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty yes­ter­day an­nounced that the can­cel­la­tion of the pa­rade came af­ter “care­ful de­lib­er­a­tion and in­tel­li­gence” aris­ing out of the SoE. Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein sub­se­quent­ly said the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed against stag­ing the event be­cause it was de­ter­mined that hav­ing so many high-rank­ing state of­fi­cials in one place was a ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty risk.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les chal­lenged the ex­pla­na­tion put for­ward, re­fer­ring to re­marks made by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro dur­ing his ap­pear­ance on a morn­ing talk show ear­li­er in Au­gust, where he claimed the crim­i­nal threat which prompt­ed the SoE was “neu­tralised.”