Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) Prakash Ra­mad­har yes­ter­day called on his Cab­i­net col­leagues to re­new their oath to the peo­ple and serve the na­tion. He said trust will nev­er be re­stored by be­hav­iour that was or ap­peared to be self-right­eous and self-seek­ing. It could on­ly be re­stored by frank­ness, open­ness and bold hon­esty by Gov­ern­ment and on all sides. Ra­mad­har was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's pre-bud­get ral­ly at Mid Cen­tre Mall, Ch­agua­nas.

He said: "Let us get on with our pledge to pro­vide good gov­er­nance for which were vot­ed in May of 2010. "This na­tion wants noth­ing less. This na­tion de­serves noth­ing less. Let us not dis­ap­point them." Ra­mad­har, who is al­so the Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs and chair­man of the Leg­isla­tive Re­view Com­mit­tee, said the COP was not com­fort­ed by the mere re­peal of the con­tro­ver­sial Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act 2011.

He said the par­ty put for­ward its po­si­tion for ac­tion which in­clud­ed that the re­peal had to be done in a way to elim­i­nate and to plug any loop­holes and to pre­vent any­one from util­is­ing such to es­cape jus­tice; that any fu­ture at­tempt by the Unit­ed States to have those ex­tra­dit­ed in con­nec­tion with the Pi­ar­co Air­port scan­dal must not be re­sist­ed by gov­ern­ment; that no gov­ern­ment amend­ments to bills be­ing de­bat­ed in the Par­lia­ment must be in­tro­duced with­out the nec­es­sary pri­or con­sid­er­a­tion of the ap­pro­pri­ate gov­ern­men­tal body; and that any per­son found to have act­ed with mala fides in those de­vel­op­ments must be re­moved and not al­lowed to act on be­half of the gov­ern­ment.

"We asked for truth, we asked for con­se­quence and for the first time our Prime Min­is­ter lift­ed in this na­tion's his­to­ry, the sa­cred veil of Cab­i­net con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and there was a very se­ri­ous con­se­quence to that," Ra­mad­har said. "That prece­dence has strength­ened our democ­ra­cy and it will for­ev­er change gov­ern­ment's ac­count­abil­i­ty to our peo­ple." He said it was not too late to re-es­tab­lish a con­tract with the peo­ple.

"There is no room for any de­vi­a­tion from that vi­sion which we gave to the peo­ple. There is no room for er­ror, slip­page or de­lib­er­ate de­vi­a­tion from our course. "Noth­ing that is done which is wrong, will es­cape its just and nat­ur­al con­se­quences," he said.