Ra­mona Ram­di­al

Mur­der was made a bail­able of­fence in the unan­i­mous­ly passed Bail (Amend­ment) Bill, 2024. For over a cen­tu­ry be­fore that, this op­por­tu­ni­ty was de­nied. This is a vic­to­ry for mur­der ac­cused and their lawyers.

In­deed, the bill brought in­to ef­fect the judg­ment of the Privy Coun­cil in the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of T&T vs Ak­ili Charles which found that mur­der ac­cused should be al­lowed to ap­ply for bail. Mr Charles was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC.

The Op­po­si­tion had backed a pre­vi­ous ver­sion of the bill in 2019 fol­low­ing the Or­ange Val­ley tragedy, where sev­en fish­er­men from my for­mer con­stituen­cy of Cou­va North were killed at sea.

The ju­di­cia­ry will de­ter­mine if there are ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances that jus­ti­fy the grant­i­ng of bail. It’s all well and good that the hu­man rights of mur­der ac­cused are pro­tect­ed, but how do they bal­ance with the rights of the mur­dered and their fam­i­lies? How do we re­ceive this first-world judg­ment in our de­vel­op­ing coun­try where vi­o­lent crim­i­nals run amok?

The Op­po­si­tion’s sen­a­tors have fol­lowed their Low­er House col­leagues in demon­strat­ing how crime con­tin­ues to be politi­cised. Why did they sup­port the Bail Amend­ment Bill but did not vote for the Whistle­blow­er Bill? It should be a great tool in the fight against crime and cor­rup­tion.

Per­haps they are cow­er­ing from MP Rag­bir’s in­de­pen­dent “morals and val­ues” vot­ing. Be­fore these op­por­tu­ni­ties can be ac­cessed by those ac­cused of mur­der and oth­er se­ri­ous of­fences, is the TTPS catch­ing them and bring­ing them to jus­tice? Are they get­ting swift jus­tice? Con­vic­tion or ex­on­er­a­tion? Or is it that mul­ti­ple crimes will be com­mit­ted by in­di­vid­u­als who evade in­ef­fec­tive polic­ing? How long does it take to get one’s day in court? Even mediocre crim­i­nal lawyers can make mas.

In Par­lia­ment last Wednes­day the PM re­vealed that a cult with­in the SSA had been plan­ning a coup d’état by train­ing sev­er­al mem­bers and ac­cu­mu­lat­ing a large cache of arms and am­mu­ni­tion. Pas­tor Ian Brown re­cent­ly claimed to have been an SSA spy known as “The Phan­tom”. He has been very com­pli­men­ta­ry of for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith in the past, and I am cer­tain that PM Row­ley would be ec­sta­t­ic if he was able to un­cov­er a link be­tween the two.

Mr Grif­fith has dis­missed the Prime Min­is­ter’s ex­pose as a ‘red her­ring’ while Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has called it a “dead cat”. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Hinds has claimed that 70,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion have gone miss­ing at the SSA! This stock­pile could be feed­ing the blood­lust of mur­der­ous gang mem­bers (who can now get bail) or stashed by some would-be mili­tia with trea­so­nous in­tent. When the SSA came in­to be­ing in 1995, its pur­pose was the pre­ven­tion of se­ri­ous crime, not its fa­cil­i­ta­tor, as it seems to have be­come.

Last week, in the UK, Rishi Sunak was the prime min­is­ter of a 14-year-old Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment. Iron­i­cal­ly, he may have been his most prime min­is­te­r­i­al in his con­ces­sion speech in front of #10 Down­ing Street. He gave no ex­cus­es, apol­o­gised and showed pyrrhic mag­na­nim­i­ty, ac­cept­ing the role as To­ry Fall Guy, whole­heart­ed­ly. It has been ar­gued that he had drunk from a poi­soned chal­ice with the To­ries on the de­cline well be­fore his as­cen­sion as par­ty leader and sub­se­quent­ly, UK PM.

Re­gard­less, he was the youngest prime min­is­ter of the Unit­ed King­dom who al­so hap­pened to be the first Hin­du of East In­di­an de­scent to hold that of­fice. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he will al­so be re­mem­bered as hav­ing led the Con­ser­v­a­tives to one of their worst de­feats in their 200-year his­to­ry. Sunak al­so sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to re­sign as soon as his par­ty finds a suit­able suc­ces­sor. One na­tion­al elec­tion loss was enough! Their lead­er­ship is­sues have been pro­tract­ed. (Af­ter all, Sunak’s pre­de­ces­sor, Liz Truss, last­ed all of 50 days in of­fice.)

As Labour Par­ty Leader Sir Keir Starmer suc­ceeds Sunak, end­ing 14 years of Con­ser­v­a­tive rule in the UK, the UNC would hope for a sim­i­lar oc­cur­rence at home. How­ev­er, what the UNC lead­er­ship is ig­no­rant of is that the change of lead­er­ship in the Labour Par­ty from Je­re­my Cor­byn to Sir Keir in 2020 would have been a ma­jor fac­tor in the change of for­tunes for a par­ty that had long lan­guished in Op­po­si­tion.

The UNC is like Labour in that sense, ex­cept for the part about chang­ing lead­er­ship to win na­tion­al elec­tions, of course. We re­call when our Op­po­si­tion Leader or her speech­writ­ers pla­gia­rised (then UK op­po­si­tion leader) Sir Keir’s mes­sage of con­grat­u­la­tions to US Pres­i­dent-elect Biden in 2021. Per­haps she would be bet­ter off try­ing to pla­gia­rise Sir Keir’s na­tion­al elec­tion vic­to­ry next year.

Will it be next year, though? PM Row­ley has been play­ing “cat and mouse” with Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the pub­lic. This prime min­is­te­r­i­al tom­fool­ery can be reme­died with fixed elec­tion dates, amongst oth­er con­sti­tu­tion­al re­forms. This year, both the Op­po­si­tion Leader and the Prime Min­is­ter have been play­ing their own par­ty mem­bers for fools with their dan­gling of some­times late/some­times ear­ly elec­tion dates. Per­haps the “cat” is of the Schrödinger va­ri­ety, be­ing both dead and alive, at the same time.

At least we can cel­e­brate that the steel­pan is now of­fi­cial­ly our na­tion­al in­stru­ment. Quite frankly, I thought that it al­ways was.