Yvonne Ba­boolal

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, pi­lot­er of the Death Penal­ty Bill to fa­cil­i­tate hang­ings, is an abo­li­tion­ist and bit­ter­ly op­posed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. This was the charge made by Op­po­si­tion Diego Mar­tin East MP Colm Im­bert dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion in the House yes­ter­day. Im­bert, in­sist­ing that the bill be­fore the Low­er House was re­al­ly go­ing to abol­ish the death penal­ty and not fa­cil­i­tate it, based his ac­cu­sa­tions against the AG on an ar­ti­cle he wrote in 2004 head­lined: "Say­ing No To The Death Pe­nal­i­ty".

In the col­umn, Ram­lo­gan said he could not sup­port the death penal­ty be­cause the jus­tice sys­tem was flawed and called on the then PNM gov­ern­ment to abol­ish the death penal­ty, Im­bert said. "Shock­ing!" East Port-of-Spain MP, Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, threw out. "Mr Speak­er, the pi­lot­er of bill is bit­ter­ly op­posed to hang­ing. He is an abo­li­tion­ist," Im­bert said. Im­bert said he could find no oth­er rea­son for the bill which would do the op­po­site of what it said it would do.

"I would not be sur­prised if the AG, con­scious­ly or un­con­scious­ly, is an abo­li­tion­ist." Im­bert quot­ed from a 2000 ar­ti­cle by Mar­tin Daly SC who said the same death penal­ty leg­is­la­tion, brought by the then UNC gov­ern­ment, would open up a flood of lit­i­ga­tions and ju­di­cial re­view by con­vict­ed mur­der­ers. Ear­li­er, Im­bert was cau­tioned by Speak­er Wade Mark for us­ing a Shake­spear­an quote from Mac­beth to de­scribe the con­tri­bu­tions of Gas­par­il­lo MP Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan.