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Friday, August 1, 2025

Swift justice

by

20131215

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ex­pressed con­cern about the de­lays in the jus­tice sys­tem and the spike in mur­ders which have sur­passed last year's toll.Speak­ing to re­porters at the Prime Min­is­ter's an­nu­al toy dri­ve at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said the Gov­ern­ment will be look­ing at pro­claim­ing the "in­fa­mous" Pre­lim­i­nary In­quiry Bill in an at­tempt to deal with the back­log of cas­es.

She made the state­ments when asked to com­ment on the re­cent crit­i­cism against Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie about de­lays by judges in de­liv­er­ing judg­ments.Com­mend­ing the Chief Jus­tice on mea­sures and steps tak­en to ad­dress the is­sue, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said any de­lay in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice is a con­cern to every­one.

How­ev­er, she said: "There are mat­ters that we could help with which is on a leg­isla­tive scale. You re­mem­ber the in­fa­mous Pre­lim­i­nary In­quiry Bill that we had brought to the Par­lia­ment which re­mains yet un­pro­claimed."It is some­thing we want to look at again be­cause that could help to deal with some of the back­log at mag­is­trates courts by re­mov­ing pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries and do­ing pa­per com­mit­tals and so on. So leg­isla­tive­ly there are mat­ters we could do."

Con­cerns were raised af­ter at­tor­neys of death row in­mate Lester Pit­man threat­ened le­gal ac­tion chal­leng­ing the Court of Ap­peal's al­most four-year de­lay to hand down his de­ci­sion.Pit­man's lawyers have al­so threat­ened to write the Prime Min­is­ter to in­voke im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against the Chief Jus­tice for ju­di­cial mis­con­duct last month.Asked if she re­ceived any let­ter re­gard­ing that mat­ter, she said she had not re­ceived any let­ter, but she could not say whether one was re­ceived by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Pledg­ing the Gov­ern­ment's con­tin­ued sup­port of the Chief Jus­tice and ju­di­cia­ry, she said, "This is not a new mat­ter, while there have been some re­duc­tions in the time spans for de­lays and the com­ple­tion of mat­ters, in­deed there is more that can be done by all of us."Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of mur­ders, which have now sur­passed last year's toll of 379, Per­sad-Bisses­sar lament­ed that some of them were crimes of pas­sion. How­ev­er, she said, "Mur­der is mur­der and every sin­gle one is painful and trau­mat­ic to us."

On the the Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment in the fight against crime, she said: "I know the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is do­ing the best that he can, but there is still much more that we need to do. Some of the crimes are crimes of pas­sion. That does not mean that it is cor­rect, that it is some­thing that is right. Those are more dif­fi­cult to con­tain where it is that it is a do­mes­tic sit­u­a­tion where crimes of pas­sion are tak­ing place. But mur­der is mur­der and each loss is a great loss."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so agreed with the pro­pos­al made by the Stand­ing Or­der Com­mit­tee of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Fri­day to re­duce the speak­ing time of MPs from 75 min­utes to 30 min­utes. The com­mit­tee al­so rec­om­mend­ed a month­ly 30-minute ques­tion time for the Prime Min­is­ter to re­spond on is­sues of na­tion­al im­por­tance.The PM said: "I be­lieve we talk too much some­times in Par­lia­ment. There is a fa­mous say­ing (which states) 'say it in six and if you can't say it in six then it is not good lis­ten­ing.'"

In oth­er Par­lia­ments, she said, the MPs speak­ing time is much short­er than 75 min­utes."But," she said, "it is be­fore the House com­mit­tee and it will be dis­cussed and de­bat­ed as well, so it may be a step in the right di­rec­tion. We need to get con­sen­sus from the Par­lia­ment as a whole in terms of speak­ing time."


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