Geisha Kow­lessar

Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards can do noth­ing but hold a dis­cus­sion with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar about the con­tro­ver­sy over Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Of­fences) Act 2011. Per­sad-Bisses­sar, how­ev­er, owes the coun­try an ex­pla­na­tion. For­mer head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Regi­nald Du­mas said Richards would be "out of place" to de­mand a writ­ten ex­pla­na­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter or call for Cab­i­net min­is­ters to re­sign.

Du­mas has al­so brand­ed yes­ter­day's vis­it to Laven­tille by Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er a "di­ver­sion." The con­tro­ver­sial Sec­tion 34 would have al­lowed peo­ple to have their cas­es thrown out ten years af­ter the al­leged com­mis­sion of the of­fence, once no tri­al had be­gun. It cre­at­ed an out­cry, how­ev­er, when Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son be­came the first to ap­ply to be dis­charged af­ter it was pro­claimed on Au­gust 31.

On Tues­day, thou­sands heed­ed the call by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley to march from In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, to de­liv­er a pe­ti­tion to Pres­i­dent's House. Row­ley hand-de­liv­ered a pe­ti­tion with more than 25,000 sig­na­tures and called on Richards to de­mand a writ­ten ex­pla­na­tion from Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

"The Pres­i­dent can't de­mand any­thing of the Prime Min­is­ter...she is the head of the ex­ec­u­tive,"?Du­mas said, adding: "What the Pres­i­dent can do is take the pe­ti­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter and re­quest she come and see him to dis­cuss the mat­ter...But I call on the Prime Min­is­ter to make a com­pre­hen­sive state­ment on this mat­ter." He said of the thou­sands of sig­na­tures, it was clear to dis­cern that all might not be PNM sup­port­ers.

The de­ci­sion to pro­claim the act, Du­mas said, was one which was made by Cab­i­net, which al­so in­clud­ed the in­put of the Prime Min­is­ter, and Per­sad-Bisses­sar must make a state­ment to the cit­i­zens. "The Prime Min­is­ter should very well come out and ex­plain ex­act­ly what tran­spired, be­cause as the head of Cab­i­net she is very much in­volved in the whole mat­ter," he said.

"If the Prime Min­is­ter was in fact tak­en by sur­prise by the mat­ter, as she claimed, then that would mean that one of her min­is­ters went be­hind her back to the Pres­i­dent to have the act pro­claimed and there­fore that would mean that the Prime Min­is­ter can­not re­pose trust in her min­is­ter," Du­mas added. He said in the West­min­ster sys­tem if it ap­pears that a mem­ber de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­led Par­lia­ment, that min­is­ter would have to do the ho­n­ourable thing and re­sign.

He said cit­i­zens would not eas­i­ly for­get or dis­miss the mat­ter and equat­ed the Sec­tion 34 con­tro­ver­sy with cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions sur­round­ing Calder Hart or "even worse." "The Prime Min­is­ter vis­it­ing Laven­tille is a di­ver­sion to this is­sue. If the Gov­ern­ment think they could sim­ply di­vert peo­ple's at­ten­tion by us­ing these tac­tics, they are wrong," he said. "They don't un­der­stand what they have re­al­ly done...they have of­fend­ed the coun­try by giv­ing the coun­try one thing and do­ing an­oth­er by want­i­ng to as­sist some­one.

This is not a mis­step, this is some­thing that was clear­ly de­lib­er­ate and done very cyn­i­cal­ly." Say­ing the Gov­ern­ment was "very much on the de­fen­sive" and it was "not look­ing good," Du­mas said nev­er­the­less he did not ex­pect the Prime Min­is­ter to de­liv­er a pub­lic ex­pla­na­tion. "While I call on the Prime Min­is­ter to make a pub­lic state­ment I do not ex­pect it...If I were the Prime Min­is­ter I would con­tin­ue to keep my mouth shut," he said.