Trinidad’s opposition backs bail bill in major boost to crime fight

(Trinidad Guardian) A ma­jor boost in the po­lice’s an­ti-crime ar­se­nal is ex­pect­ed to un­fold fol­low­ing Wednes­day night’s pas­sage of the Bail (Amend­ment) Bill which was sur­pris­ing­ly sup­port­ed by the Op­po­si­tion.

Both sides from the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives came to­geth­er in a rare show of uni­ty to pass the leg­is­la­tion.

It was passed around 7.25 pm by a to­tal of 32 votes — 22 Gov­ern­ment MPs and 10 UNC MPs present.

The pos­i­tive out­come came dur­ing the fi­nal stage of Wednes­day’s spe­cial Par­lia­ment sit­ting to de­bate the bill – and af­ter sev­er­al days of lob­by­ing by Gov­ern­ment to sway pub­lic sup­port.

The gov­ern­ment had called Par­lia­ment out of re­cess to de­bate the bill.

At the height of the re­cent crime cri­sis, the Po­lice Ser­vice had re­quest­ed the sev­en clause bill to lock away re­peat of­fend­ers blamed for the sud­den spike in gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders.

The pro­vi­sion of the leg­is­la­tion re­stricts bail for 120 days if some­one has a con­vic­tion for se­ri­ous of­fences and is charged for one of them again. Bail will al­so be re­strict­ed if some­one is charged for a se­ri­ous of­fence, is out on bail and gets charged for the same cat­e­go­ry of of­fence.

Of­fences in­clude those which car­ry a penal­ty of 10 years’ jail con­cern­ing the Of­fences Against the Per­son Act, Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act, Kid­nap­ping Act, Sex­u­al Of­fences (against child) Act, Sex­u­al Of­fences Act, An­ti-Ter­ror­ism, Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons and Firearms Acts. Cul­prits will have to prove “ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances” where they feel should get bail.

The bill was passed with­out amend­ments al­though the Op­po­si­tion had pre­sent­ed eight amend­ments. These were re­ject­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi told Guardian Me­dia af­ter the de­bate, that he was tak­ing steps to have the bill pro­claimed as law “im­me­di­ate­ly. The case the Gov­ern­ment brought for this bill was unas­sail­able.”

UNC deputy leader David Lee said, “We now want to see – in the short­est pos­si­ble time – the re­sults of this piece of leg­is­la­tion we’ve giv­en Gov­ern­ment.”

The de­vel­op­ment was an about-face for the Op­po­si­tion which had re­fused to sup­port the bill when it was pre­sent­ed in the Up­per House in June. Then, it was passed on­ly with Gov­ern­ment and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors’ votes.

On Mon­day, how­ev­er, the Op­po­si­tion sig­naled a soft­en­ing of po­si­tion and that the “door wasn’t closed” on the bill.

Last night, the 10 UNC MPs who vot­ed for the bill in­clud­ed UNC’s Lee, Rod­ney Charles, Su­ruj Ram­bachan, Fazal Karim, Bhoe Tewarie, Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein, Vidya Guyadeen-Gopeesingh, Rudy In­dars­ingh, Ra­mona Ram­di­al and Gan­ga Singh.

Dur­ing the de­bate, Charles had said the UNC sup­port­ed the bill in prin­ci­ple but had sig­nif­i­cant reser­va­tions on it. He had pro­posed some of Op­po­si­tion’s eight amend­ments.

Singh’s con­tri­bu­tion al­so hint­ed at Op­po­si­tion sup­port. He had ac­knowl­edged that the rea­son MPs were called out of va­ca­tion to deal with the leg­is­la­tion was be­cause of de­spair, hope­less­ness and res­ig­na­tion in so­ci­ety.

He con­grat­u­lat­ed Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s pre­sen­ta­tion on the bill, not­ing Young said he wasn’t cast­ing as­per­sions on any­one and had ad­mit­ted the bill was “no sil­ver bul­let” on crime.

Singh said T&T has had a “har­vest of lead” (bul­lets) and bod­ies and MPs had to con­sid­er what to do and “…do our du­ty as leg­is­la­tors on what’s best for T&T.”

He said in the po­lit­i­cal are­na it was nec­es­sary to have col­lab­o­ra­tion and com­pro­mise for the na­tion­al in­ter­est. “I al­ways be­lieve in that,” he added.

Singh said that in or­der to deal with the tan­gi­ble de­spair “out there” and bring about the nec­es­sary change “we must first change the way we ap­proach (things) and the at­mos­phere be­tween both sides in Par­lia­ment sit­tings and the whole agen­da must be one in which we move away from asym­me­try to sym­me­try and a lev­el of com­mon­al­i­ty.”

Singh’s po­si­tion was laud­ed by Al-Rawi. The AG, how­ev­er, re­ject­ed the UNC’s pro­posed amend­ment for a one-year sun­set clause in­stead of the three-year sun­set clause Gov­ern­ment had pro­posed.

The three-year sun­set clause means the bill – af­ter be­ing pro­claimed – will be in force for three years.

Al-Rawi said Gov­ern­ment need­ed to have the three years to op­er­a­tionalise the law and the fight against crim­i­nal­i­ty couldn’t be in­ter­rupt­ed by a one-year sun­set clause. He added it was im­prac­ti­cal in an elec­tion year to have the one-year sun­set clause.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al al­so re­ject­ed the UNC’s pro­pos­al for a re­view of the bill’s im­pact every six months. He said the Op­po­si­tion has five op­por­tu­ni­ties to get such in­for­ma­tion in­clud­ing from po­lice units, Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion ques­tions to the po­lice and ques­tions in Par­lia­ment.

The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has ad­journed for re­cess again. Par­lia­ment is ex­pect­ed to re­sume in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber.