Camille Clarke

Sgt Michael Seales, the sec­re­tary of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, is call­ing on In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to step up to the plate and vote against the De­fence (Amend­ment) Bill.The bill was passed in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day with the Gov­ern­ment pre­vail­ing by a mar­gin of 29 to the PNM's 11.On Wednes­day evening, po­lice of­fi­cers held a can­dle­light vig­il on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, Port-of-Spain, but their planned vig­il did not get the per­mis­sion of act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams.

In an in­ter­view af­ter their meet­ing with Williams yes­ter­day at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, Seales said mem­bers of the De­fence Force agreed with them against the bill.He said: "Our view, as the as­so­ci­a­tion, is that we must ap­peal to In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to use their in­de­pen­dence to make a de­ci­sion that is con­sis­tent with good sense.

"They need to un­der­stand this can neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the Po­lice Ser­vice and not on­ly the Po­lice Ser­vice but al­so mem­bers of the De­fence Force."He added: "The Po­lice Ser­vice is not iso­lat­ed in this con­text. We had calls from mem­bers of the De­fence Force who in­di­cat­ed to us that we (sol­diers) don't have a voice but we want you (po­lice as­so­ci­a­tion) to ex­press our con­cerns.

"It is the first mil­i­tary or­gan­i­sa­tion that is com­ing un­der a civil­ian body."That is some­thing they did not con­tem­plate but how the leg­is­la­tion would have mor­phed, through its pre­sen­ta­tion and de­lib­er­a­tion, we re­alise it now comes ac­tu­al­i­ty for them in terms of re­al­i­ty."In this con­text we don't have that voice and we must echo their sen­ti­ments," Seales added.

Pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Sgt Anand Rame­sar, said the meet­ing was suc­cess­ful with Williams.How­ev­er, he added, he un­der­stood the role he had to play."The meet­ing to­day had a lot to do with the mem­ber­ship and the prayer gath­er­ing yes­ter­day and we were able to meet on com­mon ground with Williams in terms of how we go for­ward with is­sues deal­ing with both of us," he said.

The meet­ing had im­proved the re­la­tion­ship with mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Rame­sar said."We have con­cerns about the bill. We do not sup­port it. We are sure it will have a neg­a­tive im­pact on the Po­lice Ser­vice and we al­so are con­cerned about how it will im­pact on mem­bers of the De­fence Force. lt has emas­cu­lat­ed them (sol­diers), " he said.