Nadaleen Singh

If leg­is­la­tion to abol­ish crim­i­nal ap­peals to the Lon­don-based Privy Coun­cil goes to the Par­lia­ment, it may not get the sup­port of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP). Speak­ing to re­porters yes­ter­day, af­ter the COP's Na­tion­al Coun­cil meet­ing, po­lit­i­cal leader Prakash Ra­mad­har said the par­ty would ac­cept full con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, not piece­meal re­form­ing of leg­is­la­tion.

"We have stat­ed our po­si­tion that ref­er­en­da are re­quired and there­fore there is no au­to­mat­ic guar­an­tee that the COP will sup­port any leg­is­la­tion to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion in a piece­meal man­ner on a mat­ter of grave na­tion­al im­por­tance," he said. Last week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced in the Par­lia­ment that the Gov­ern­ment had re­viewed the mat­ter and would abol­ish crim­i­nal ap­peals to the Lon­don-based Privy Coun­cil.

Ra­madar said a mat­ter such as the mov­ing of crim­i­nal ap­peals from the Privy Coun­cil to the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) "can­not be done by a few per­sons sit­ting to­geth­er and de­cid­ing up­on it." "Our con­tin­ued ex­is­tence is about con­sul­ta­tion and in­deed, this par­ty has gone on record to say that mat­ters of the re­moval of Privy Coun­cil or the death penal­ty should be by ref­er­en­dum and there­fore, we stand by what we have said."

Ra­mad­har said the leg­is­la­tion to move crim­i­nal ap­peals to the CCJ has not been draft­ed. "We came in-that is the PP-on a promise in our man­i­festo for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. We think this is the grand­est op­por­tu­ni­ty to move for­ward with con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form that will in­clude the right for ref­er­en­dum, so that the peo­ple of T&T would have a say in this mat­ter.

"As it stands right now our po­si­tion is let's go to con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form," he said. Asked to jus­ti­fy his state­ments that there should be full con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, Ra­mad­har said: "I am not say­ing for a mo­ment that we should agree it should go, or that we do not agree that it should go. What I'm say­ing is the process be­cause this is how pol­i­tics changes.

"We can­not al­low the pop­u­la­tion to be vic­tims of de­ci­sions tak­en by those who they elect­ed and then wait for five years for re­sponse. Ref­er­en­da are crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant and that must come be­fore and we do not be­lieve the process of piece­meal con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form should be en­gaged in, but we should have a to­tal­i­ty of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and then deal with those is­sues."