The de­ci­sion by the Gov­ern­ment to in­tro­duce the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (De­fence and Po­lice Com­plaints) Bill as a means of deal­ing with the crime sit­u­a­tion, has sparked a great deal of dis­cus­sion. Af­ter lis­ten­ing to ar­gu­ments on both sides and tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion what this piece of con­tro­ver­sial leg­is­la­tion is in­tend­ed to do, I have come the con­clu­sion that this bill should be re­ject­ed by the sen­a­tors in the up­per house.

The facts of the mat­ter are very clear. First, the pro­ce­dure adopt­ed by the Gov­ern­ment in the in­tro­duc­tion of the bill was wrong. Be­fore bring­ing this bill to par­lia­ment, the Gov­ern­ment should have had open dis­cus­sions with the ma­jor stake­hold­ers ie. the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the De­fence Force, in or­der to hear their thoughts. The Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion has clear­ly and open­ly re­ject­ed the bill, claim­ing that it threat­ens the in­de­pen­dence and in­tegri­ty of the po­lice ser­vice.

Their mem­bers have signed a pe­ti­tion to reg­is­ter their dis­ap­proval and they have al­so called on the Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to de­clare his stand on the is­sue. They have al­so planned two vig­ils, one in Trinidad and the oth­er in To­ba­go, as a form of protest.We are yet to re­ceive an of­fi­cial re­sponse to the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion from the De­fence Force.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a num­ber of rep­utable or­gan­i­sa­tions have ex­pressed se­ri­ous reser­va­tions about the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion. They in­clude the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA), the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion (CBA), the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC), the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU), the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), the Round­table in De­fence of Democ­ra­cy in T&T, Fix­in T&T and, more re­cent­ly, the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Union and Non Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (FI­TUN).

Some of these or­gan­i­sa­tions rep­re­sent thou­sands of peo­ple all across this coun­try and de­spite the con­cerns raised by these groups, the Gov­ern­ment is de­ter­mined to go ahead with this bill. This is sup­posed to be a Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. If this is so, then where is the part­ner­ship of the peo­ple in this process?

Fur­ther, this bill is un­nec­es­sary. The Prime Min­is­ter, in her con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate in Par­lia­ment on March 15, not­ed that since the joint po­lice and army pa­trols be­gan in Laven­tille, there has been no mur­ders in 12 days. If this is true, then why do we need leg­is­la­tion to do what could be done with­out it? If man­pow­er is the is­sue, then the so­lu­tion is to re­cruit and train more po­lice of­fi­cers, not more leg­is­la­tion.

Fi­nal­ly, the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion is de­signed to give sol­diers pow­ers equal to those of po­lice of­fi­cers. But as we have been told over and over, the ma­jor prob­lem in deal­ing with crime in T&T is de­tec­tion. If we don't know who and where the crim­i­nals are, then there would be no ar­rests, no pros­e­cu­tion and no con­vic­tion.The Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion is right, there­fore, when it as­serts that "fight­ing crime with more laws won't work."

A Homer

Williamsville