Gail Alexan­der

Tabaquite MP Su­ruj Ram­bachan has called on the coun­try to come to­geth­er against crime in the name of lit­tle Daniel Guer­ra who went miss­ing last week and was lat­er found drowned. "The death of Daniel Guer­ra has caused us to draw the line in the sand be­tween the prover­bial good and evil," Ram­bachan said in the Low­er House on Wednes­day. Ram­bachan in­voked Daniel's name in de­bate on leg­is­la­tion to im­ple­ment the death penal­ty. He list­ed Daniel-his con­stituent-while re­lat­ing a num­ber of cas­es of chil­dren and adults who were sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed and killed, or kid­napped in pre­vi­ous years.

Ram­bachan read out graph­ic de­tails of what was done to the chil­dren and adults, caus­ing protests from PNM MPs. Ram­bachan said he want­ed to shock T&T in­to un­der­stand­ing the sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing crime. He said Daniel's dis­ap­pear­ance and death had dri­ven fear in­to the hearts of chil­dren in Gas­par­il­lo where he had lived and, by ex­ten­sion, oth­er chil­dren in T&T. He said par­ents and sib­lings in fam­i­lies in T&T griev­ed for what could hap­pen to their own as well, af­ter Daniel's death.

On prompt­ings from the PNM about the Chil­dren's Bill-to pro­tect chil­dren- Ram­bachan said this was now be­fore the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion and would be brought to Par­lia­ment. "I hope you stand up and sup­port it and help us bring it in­to law!" Ram­bachan chal­lenged the PNM. He at­tacked the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion for in­ac­tion on crime, say­ing this caused it to reach to to­day's pro­por­tions. "The PNM is be­hav­ing as though crime is a new phe­nom­e­non and the PP must solve it overnight," he added. He rec­om­mend­ed a rep­ri­mand for those whose in­ac­tion caused a de­lay in bring­ing mur­der­ers to jus­tice. Ram­bachan ac­cused PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley of "mis­lead­ing" the pub­lic about PP poli­cies. He said Row­ley was nev­er in the Par­lia­ment Cham­ber for de­bate.