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Monday, July 21, 2025

No-confidence motion against Al-Rawi

by

20160516

The op­po­si­tion's no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi will come up for par­lia­men­tary de­bate be­tween next Thurs­day and next month, Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Low­er House Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said yes­ter­day.

The Op­po­si­tion last week filed a mo­tion of no-con­fi­dence con­cern­ing the AG af­ter he suc­cess­ful­ly pi­lot­ed the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) bill to pas­sage last Tues­day. The con­tro­ver­sial bill seeks to ex­pand the re­mit of the SSA to col­lect in­for­ma­tion on a wide range of mat­ters rather than deal­ing with drug in­ter­dic­tion on­ly. The SSA has the pow­er of wire-tap­ping fol­low­ing ap­pli­ca­tion for a war­rant. The Op­po­si­tion has ar­gued that the bill vi­o­lates fun­da­men­tal free­doms in­clud­ing pri­va­cy and re­quires a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage, rather than the sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty via which it was passed.

The no-con­fi­dence mo­tion qual­i­fies for de­bate 12 days af­ter it was filed. Op­po­si­tion busi­ness such as this is han­dled every fourth Fri­day of the month which is Pri­vate Mem­bers' Day. Yes­ter­day, Robin­son-Reg­is said the mo­tion qual­i­fied for de­bate any time af­ter next Thurs­day (May 26)

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion of­fi­cials not­ed an­oth­er Low­er House ses­sion will not be held in May again af­ter next week since next Thurs­day is a hol­i­day. The Low­er House will not be meet­ing on the Fri­day af­ter that (May 27). There­fore, af­ter that, the next avail­able op­por­tu­ni­ty for the mo­tion to be de­bat­ed may be on the next Pri­vate Mem­bers' Day, that is, June 24.

On whether the UNC will seek ear­li­er de­bate (some time im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter May 26) Op­po­si­tion MP Bar­ry Padarath said the UNC's cau­cus meets to­mor­row and will dis­cuss the is­sue.

Robin­son-Reg­is said the Gov­ern­ment is ready when­ev­er the Op­po­si­tion is with all speak­ers in re­serve. But she not­ed next Wednes­day–when the Low­er House meets–is the day for gov­ern­ment busi­ness.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so not­ed that Fri­day's House ses­sion will fea­ture de­bate on the long-await­ed pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion which has been re­viewed by a joint se­lect com­mit­tee. The lat­ter's re­port on the leg­is­la­tion will be de­bat­ed and it will be de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate next week Tues­day.

Mean­while, the SSA bill is be­ing sent to the Pres­i­dent for as­sent, Par­lia­ment con­firmed. Yes­ter­day, for­mer PP ac­tivist and now "so­cial/po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist" Philip Alexan­der wrote the Pres­i­dent call­ing on him to "hold his hand" on as­sent­ing to the bill pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion of whether it re­al­ly need­ed a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage, rather than the sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote via which it was passed.

Ra­mad­har re­sponds to Row­ley

It was very dis­ap­point­ing that Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley could on­ly say 'crime is un­ac­cept­able' and not give a sense of hope that the sit­u­a­tion will be dealt with, Op­po­si­tion MP Prakash Ra­mad­har has said.

Row­ley ex­pressed the view when he re­turned home from over­seas last week­end. But Ra­mad­har (Op­po­si­tion shad­ow Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty spokesman) said, "The PM's ut­ter­ance was ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ing in terms of the best that could have been of­fered by the coun­try's leader. We've al­ways known crime is un­ac­cept­able and it's so atro­cious now that peo­ple are liv­ing in greater fear. So they look to the lead­er­ship to send some sense of hope, for light at what is hoped will be a short tun­nel, but we've been dis­ap­point­ed.

"It re­quires a more ro­bust ef­fort in terms of po­lice re­sponse and it must be en­sured that re­spons­es re­ceived by agen­cies must al­so be at­tend­ed to as some­times a mur­der is trig­gered from small ar­gu­ments. A breach of the peace can there­fore lead to some­thing far worse and if in­ter­ven­tion is made at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty, many crimes–es­pe­cial­ly mur­der–can be avoid­ed.

"What this does is em­pow­er the law­ful and law-abid­ing to know that state re­sources will come to their as­sis­tance, what­ev­er their dif­fi­cul­ties. It will al­so weak­en the crim­i­nal el­e­ment's re­solve if they know that every in­frac­tion of the rights of oth­ers will im­me­di­ate­ly be met by the full force of law en­force­ment."


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