Richard Lord

The Gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to de­bate the con­tro­ver­sial De­fence (Amend­ment) Bill 2013 in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day, but it will not be sup­port­ed by the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment.At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan will present the bill, which re­quires a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage.But the Op­po­si­tion is in­sist­ing it will "op­pose it res­olute­ly" when it is de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment.

Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds said yes­ter­day the move was a "knee-jerk re­ac­tion" by the Gov­ern­ment to the spi­ralling mur­der rate, adding that the mat­ter was not prop­er­ly thought out.He said the Op­po­si­tion and the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens across the coun­try "be­lieve that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter was at­tempt­ing to cre­ate a pri­vate army."He said that was dan­ger­ous and not what cit­i­zens de­sired.

What was re­quired, Hinds said, was an in­crease in the strength of the Po­lice Ser­vice to be­tween 10,000 and 12,000 of­fi­cers. There are an es­ti­mat­ed 7,000 cur­rent­ly. Hinds said the po­lice need­ed to be trained in de­tect­ing and pros­e­cut­ing crime.He in­sist­ed: "We are go­ing to op­pose that bill in Par­lia­ment."

The bill will amend Sec­tion 5 of the act. The ex­plana­to­ry note to the bill says it seeks to amend the leg­is­la­tion to con­fer any mem­ber of the De­fence Force, while as­sist­ing po­lice in the fight against crime, "with the same pow­ers, au­thor­i­ties, priv­i­leges and im­mu­ni­ties" as po­lice of­fi­cers.This was one of the lat­est mea­sures an­nounced by the Gov­ern­ment in the fight against crime.Op­po­si­tion MPs had pre­vi­ous­ly raised con­cerns about the mea­sure.

Mean­while, leg­is­la­tion to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion to al­low for a sys­tem of en­hanced in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go is still list­ed for de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.This is de­spite calls from the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Dr Kei­th Row­ley and the re-elect­ed Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Orville Lon­don for the leg­is­la­tion to be with­drawn.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar pre­sent­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment Bill for de­bate on Jan­u­ary 16, five days be­fore the THA elec­tion. The de­bate was sus­pend­ed af­ter the Op­po­si­tion said it would not be giv­ing the re­quired sup­port. The Gov­ern­ment had an­nounced its in­ten­tion to re­fer the mea­sure to a joint se­lect com­mit­tee for fur­ther de­lib­er­a­tions, but Row­ley said the Op­po­si­tion would not par­tic­i­pate in that process.

The mat­ter was ex­pect­ed to be raised in the gov­ern­ment par­lia­men­tary cau­cus a few weeks ago. At­tempts to con­tact House leader and Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.The Sen­ate did not meet yes­ter­day as it was ad­journed last week to a date to be fixed