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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Call for 2 DPPs to ensure efficiency

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20140221

There should be two Di­rec­tors of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), in­stead of one, to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy.The sug­ges­tion was put for­ward by San Fer­nan­do at­tor­ney Kevin Rati­ram at the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Con­sul­ta­tion at Paria Suites Ho­tel, La Ro­maine, on Wednes­day night.An­oth­er is­sue was gay rights, which saw ac­tivist Ken­ty Mitchell ap­peal­ing for "pro­tec­tion by the Con­sti­tu­tion of the land."

Not­ing that the DPP had the sole pow­er whether to charge some­one, what of­fences to charge them with and whether to dis­con­tin­ue pros­e­cu­tion, Rati­ram said:"The pow­er of the DPP is over­whelm­ing. There needs to be a check and bal­ance on this pow­er."I am ad­vo­cat­ing the ap­point­ment of two DPPs. In cas­es of se­ri­ous crimes, charges should on­ly be laid and pros­e­cu­tions dis­con­tin­ued where both DPPs con­cur."

Rati­ram said that would re­duce the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the ar­bi­trary ex­er­cise of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pow­ers by a sin­gle per­son.He al­so said there was no of­fi­cial chan­nel by which the DPP could be held ac­count­able for mat­ters lin­ger­ing for un­rea­son­ably long pe­ri­ods.He added: "I find it un­ac­cept­able that a file should re­main on the DPP's desk year up­on year and when ques­tions are raised as to the sta­tus of the mat­ter, the re­sponse is sim­ple 'the mat­ter is still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.'"

Agree­ing that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al should con­tin­ue to have no role in the pros­e­cu­tion of crim­i­nal charges, he ar­gued that the AG should be giv­en the pow­er to in­quire from the DPP the sta­tus of any in­ves­ti­ga­tion.Mitchell, who said he had been liv­ing with a man for 16 years, said he twice sued the State af­ter he was ar­rest­ed "for just be­ing my­self, open­ly gay" and won. How­ev­er, he con­tin­ued to be vic­timised, he added.

He said: "I am liv­ing in this coun­try all my life and still we can't get gay rights. I am open­ly gay still. I am in a re­la­tion­ship for 16 years with one per­son and still I can't get gay rights."I don't know if I have to do like my fam­i­ly and jump on a plane to go to Eng­land to get gay rights, be­cause its seems like we are not get­ting it here. Some­thing is wrong."Mitchell said he ran a taxi ser­vice.He said: "They (po­lice) stop lock­ing me up now, They start giv­ing me tick­ets for noth­ing...

"It is vic­tim­i­sa­tion. All I want is equal rights that the po­lice or the mag­is­trate in San Fer­nan­do do not vic­timise me. Peo­ple will watch me fun­ny. What I do be­hind closed doors is my busi­ness."Sev­er­al peo­ple, in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from re­li­gious bod­ies, spoke for or against gay rights.One per­son ex­pressed con­cern about harsh ac­tion against peo­ple in oth­er coun­tries where there was gay rights leg­is­la­tion who were against it for re­li­gious rea­sons.

"Peo­ple have lost their jobs in the UK and Cana­da, where sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion is in­clud­ed in the leg­is­la­tion, if you refuse on the ground of re­li­gion to mar­ry or pro­vide ac­com­mo­da­tion (to gays)."Peo­ple are be­ing sued and forced to go out of busi­ness there. There has to be a bal­ance," the speak­er added.San­dra Ram­lakhan, of the Con­sor­tium of Dis­abil­i­ty Or­gan­i­sa­tions, ad­vo­cat­ed for the word "dis­abil­i­ty" to be ex­press­ly stat­ed in the pre­am­ble of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

"If dis­abil­i­ty is not stat­ed, it is al­ways ex­clud­ed. A fine ex­am­ple is the Mil­len­ni­um De­vel­op­ment Goals, where none of the goals stat­ed dis­abil­i­ty."As a re­sult very few coun­tries in the world have ac­tu­al­ly achieved their mil­len­ni­um goals," she said.She al­so asked for the phrase, "per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties", to be used in­stead of "dif­fer­ent­ly-abled".Ram­lakhan, who us­es a wheel­chair, was al­so not con­vinced that the Gov­ern­ment or the Op­po­si­tion were en­thu­si­as­tic about hav­ing peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties in Par­lia­ment.

She said the Pres­i­dent se­lect­ed two dis­abled In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors but the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion mem­bers were yet to rec­i­p­ro­cate."That is in poor taste," she said.The meet­ing, at­tend­ed by Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, was chaired by Er­rol Fa­bi­en.


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