Richard Lord

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Dr Kei­th Row­ley says no mat­ter what amend­ments the Gov­ern­ment may bring to the Sen­ate lat­er this month, leg­is­la­tion to give the army po­lice pow­ers will nev­er be passed.He said the Gov­ern­ment was just ef­fec­tive­ly de­feat­ed in the Sen­ate last Wednes­day af­ter four key in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors spoke out against the bill.

The Gov­ern­ment re­ject­ed the con­cerns of the Op­po­si­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and passed it with the re­quired ma­jor­i­ty, he said, but in the Sen­ate the in­de­pen­dents, whose sup­port was re­quired, spoke out firm­ly against the main pro­vi­sion of the leg­is­la­tion, which was to grant po­lice pow­ers to sol­diers."No amend­ment, by re­mov­ing this (pro­vi­sion), can save the bill, be­cause that was the back­bone of the bill," he said, adding that it now means, "The bill is stone-cold dead."

Row­ley said so in an in­ter­view with re­porters af­ter yes­ter­day's Round­table meet­ing at City Hall, Port-of-Spain.On the planned amend­ments Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment was now try­ing to "cob­ble up some amal­gam and try to pass that," but warned, "With­out the pow­ers of ar­rest, the Gov­ern­ment would have failed in what it set out to do."No amount of amend­ments can save a bill that is fa­tal­ly flawed. It is as sim­ple as that."

He said no mat­ter what amend­ment is brought by the Gov­ern­ment when the de­bate re­sumes on April 23, the main pro­vi­sion of the bill will not be sup­port­ed and the leg­is­la­tion, un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.Any at­tempt by the Gov­ern­ment to give sol­diers po­lice pow­ers, even with a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote, would be wrong, he ar­gued.

He said the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vid­ed for such mat­ters to be done "a par­tic­u­lar way, with par­tic­u­lar safe­guards," but what the Gov­ern­ment put for­ward in the Par­lia­ment did not meet those re­quire­ments.Row­ley said that pro­vi­sion re­quired that "per­sons wield­ing the pow­er of po­lice have to be ap­point­ed by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. They have to fall un­der the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and cer­tain li­a­bil­i­ties at­tached to their ac­tions."

None of those things was sat­is­fied by what was be­fore the Par­lia­ment, he said. "So there is no way this bill can be saved."Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment was hop­ing to "dupe" in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to pass the law, but whether the Gov­ern­ment re­turned with the bill, aban­doned it or sent it to a com­mit­tee, "We will not ac­cept po­lice pow­ers be­ing capri­cious­ly giv­en to sol­diers to cre­ate a state of man­age­ment which is alien and will di­vide the peo­ple of T&T."

Row­ley al­so told re­porters yes­ter­day At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan should ten­der his res­ig­na­tion to the PM.