Geisha Kow­lessar

The con­tro­ver­sial De­fence (Amend­ment) Bill which was passed in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of gov­ern­ment's pub­lic re­la­tions ex­er­cise, says for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, dur­ing a news brief­ing at Gas­ton Court, Ch­agua­nas, yes­ter­day."What the gov­ern­ment did on Fri­day was to pass a "Fly­ing Squad" in the army and in the Po­lice Ser­vice un­der the di­rec­tion and con­trol of the prime min­is­ter, the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and the Cab­i­net," Ma­haraj said.

What was even worse, he added, was that the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (PSS­WA) was against the mea­sure.Ma­haraj said for the ini­tia­tive to work de­pend­ed on the co-op­er­a­tion of po­lice of­fi­cers but this was not the case."When a sol­dier takes the ac­cused per­son to the po­lice sta­tion to be charged that would de­pend up­on the co-op­er­a­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice."A gov­ern­ment can­not fight crime by fight­ing the po­lice, you have to fight the crim­i­nal," Ma­haraj urged.

He said by pass­ing the bill the gov­ern­ment was try­ing to give the im­pres­sion it was fight­ing crime but in fact had no crime plan."If the gov­ern­ment want­ed to add po­lice of­fi­cers all they had to do was to add po­lice to the Po­lice Ser­vice," Ma­haraj said.He said a "foun­da­tion prin­ci­ple" of the Con­sti­tu­tion man­dat­ed that a po­lice of­fi­cer be in­de­pen­dent of the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate to do in­ves­ti­ga­tions and pros­e­cu­tions.

"You can­not have a de­fence force per­son­nel who de­pends up­on the min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty for ap­point­ment, for pro­mo­tion, for trans­fer, for ben­e­fits be sub­ject of in­flu­ence of the min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and by ex­ten­sion un­der the in­flu­ence of the Cab­i­net.

"If you have that you are chang­ing the con­sti­tu­tion to a coun­try like Zim­bab­we. What they are say­ing is they are the Robert Mu­gabe of T&T. In Guyana there was the House of Is­rael, a pri­vate army of Pres­i­dent Forbes Burn­ham. That is what they are try­ing to do in T&T, it has noth­ing to do with crime."He al­so ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of want­i­ng to cre­ate a per­ma­nent state of emer­gency and want­i­ng to "lock up" those who were op­posed to its ideals.

When the vote was tak­en on Fri­day, all 29 PP Gov­ern­ment mem­bers were present in Par­lia­ment, giv­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion more than enough votes which were re­quired to pass the bill.The leg­is­la­tion would now move to the Sen­ate for de­bate. The gov­ern­ment al­so re­quires a three-fifths spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage of the bill in the Sen­ate. The PSS­WA has planned a can­dle­light vig­il for Wednes­day in protest of the bill.