Suc­ceed­ing Par­lia­ments have not been able to de­cide on a strat­e­gy to im­ple­ment the death penal­ty for peo­ple con­vict­ed of mur­der who have had their day in court, or whether cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment should be re­moved from the laws of the land. What they have done is to demon­strate a kind of in­ca­pac­i­ty for self-gov­ern­ment af­ter decades of po­lit­i­cal In­de­pen­dence.As is well-known, the British Privy Coun­cil, the fi­nal ap­peal court for T&T, has said to coun­tries all over the Caribbean which still de­pend on it in these mat­ters, if you want to ex­e­cute con­vict­ed killers then you must do so with­in five years of their first con­vic­tion.Over the decade since the last ex­e­cu­tions here, there have been pe­ri­ods of right­eous in­dig­na­tion af­ter a par­tic­u­lar­ly grue­some mur­der or two. The sub­ject gets on to the front pages of the news­pa­pers and the coun­try be­comes ag­i­tat­ed for the mo­ment. And soon enough the anger sub­sides.Gov­ern­ments have sought to amend leg­is­la­tion by seek­ing con­sen­sus in the Par­lia­ment and the NAR Gov­ern­ment of 1986-1991 ap­point­ed a task force which ad­vo­cat­ed the cat­e­gori­sa­tion of mur­ders.

Twen­ty years lat­er, and ex­cept for four morn­ings of June/Ju­ly 1999 when then At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ramesh Ma­haraj found a way for ten con­vict­ed men, in­clud­ing the in­fa­mous Dole Chadee, to be ex­e­cut­ed, gov­ern­ments have come and gone, ex­press­ing the in­ten­tion to car­ry out the law but have failed mis­er­ably. What is un­ac­cept­able about the in­abil­i­ty to move for­ward, one way or the oth­er, are the dis­plays of help­less­ness and the blame game that takes place in the Par­lia­ment.

Each gov­ern­ment has ex­pressed its in­ten­tion to car­ry out the death penal­ty yet they re­main in­ca­pable of achiev­ing the stat­ed ob­jec­tive. The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion brought an amend­ment to the Cap­i­tal Of­fences Bill in 2011 es­sen­tial­ly seek­ing to cat­e­gorise mur­ders so that those deemed heinous would at­tract the death penal­ty. The cur­rent op­po­si­tion ar­gued that do­ing so would get the Privy Coun­cil in­volved and the fi­nal court would then be in a po­si­tion to scrap the death penal­ty com­plete­ly.

Of course, that was not the first time that a gov­ern­ment has been blocked by the op­po­si­tion from chang­ing the leg­is­la­tion. The his­to­ry is known well: when in pow­er one par­ty is anx­ious to find ways to change the leg­is­la­tion to be able to ex­e­cute, but when it re­verts to op­po­si­tion it is de­ter­mined to pre­vent the oth­er par­ty from seek­ing to ex­e­cute.

For cer­tain the same game would be played if a gov­ern­ment were to bring a draft bill to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, out on a limb, put there by his Prime Min­is­ter, is des­per­ate to pick up pop­u­lar caus­es for his own po­lit­i­cal bat­tles in­side par­ty and gov­ern­ment, so he mounts a band­wag­on based on the grief of par­ents.

Un­able to dis­guise her dis­gust for her min­is­ter's cam­paign, the Prime Min­is­ter dis­tances her­self and gov­ern­ment from his cam­paign. Al­most cer­tain­ly, this cam­paign is quite like­ly to end in a mas­sive and nasty po­lit­i­cal fight with­out an ad­vance on the mat­ter. All the while what is so ob­vi­ous­ly need­ed is ne­glect­ed. First, the Gov­ern­ment has to re­form the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to al­low con­vict­ed per­sons to have their ap­peals de­cid­ed up­on with­in the five-year time frame. Sec­ond­ly, the Gov­ern­ment of the day must move away from the UK Privy Coun­cil, which has an ide­o­log­i­cal po­si­tion against hang­ing, and to­ward the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, which will de­cide such mat­ters based on the laws of the land and the dis­po­si­tion of the so­ci­ety. When we find our­selves in­ca­pable of de­cid­ing mat­ters of im­por­tance to our so­ci­ety, we seem de­pen­dent and en­fee­bled.