Shir­van Williams

There are sev­er­al de­tained gang mem­bers who may now have to be re­leased be­cause of the col­lapse of the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (Sautt). Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said so yes­ter­day dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (Elec­tron­ic Mon­i­tor­ing Bill).

"What is cru­cial about the dis­man­tling of Sautt is that there are 69 gang mem­bers cur­rent­ly in de­ten­tion who may have to be freed be­cause of the dis­man­tling of Sautt, and that is go­ing to be a cru­cial is­sue that we have to deal with. These cas­es may col­lapse be­cause the of­fi­cers may no longer be there to give ev­i­dence," he said. He al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of hav­ing no crime plan, adding that they were in­ca­pable of con­trol­ling crime.

"So what we have here, Madam Vice Pres­i­dent, is pos­si­bly an OJT gov­ern­ment. On the job train­ing, try­ing to grasp with crime. We have seen no co­her­ent crime plan. We are see­ing poli­cies ar­tic­u­lat­ed by mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment on the fly which lead us to be­lieve there is no crime plan," he said.

Deyals­ingh said gov­ern­ment min­is­ters al­ways seemed to con­tra­dict them­selves and this was one of the rea­sons he was afraid to sup­port the bill. "We have had many con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments by gov­ern­ment min­is­ters. One day one min­is­ter would talk about gay rights, abor­tion, and the next day her act­ing Prime Min­is­ter would say he knows noth­ing about that. Where is the con­sis­ten­cy in pol­i­cy when it comes to this?" he said.

He ques­tioned the use of the pro­posed elec­tron­ic an­klets on re­leased crim­i­nals, say­ing there was no pa­role sys­tem in place in this coun­try. Deyals­ingh said the leg­is­la­tion might not be to the ben­e­fit of cit­i­zens, re­fer­ring to the Hansard record of the con­tri­bu­tion of sen­a­tor Ja­mal Mo­hammed. He said due process would go out the win­dow if the bill were passed and he feared for the democ­ra­cy of cit­i­zens.

How­ev­er, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie in­ter­ject­ed that the state­ment was a mis­take on Mo­hammed's part. Deyals­ingh re­it­er­at­ed his point with sup­port from his col­leagues that this was a mis­take that sim­ply should not be made. He said there was no way that he could sup­port the bill at this time.

"It is dif­fi­cult to sup­port this bill, on two grounds. One, we need the pa­role sys­tem first, bring that first; and two, be­cause of sen­a­tor Ja­mal Mo­hammed's con­tri­bu­tions and the to­tal erad­i­ca­tion of peo­ple's rights-mis­take or not, he enun­ci­at­ed gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy-I can­not sup­port this bill," he said.