Joshua Sur­tees

The stand­out is­sue at the first pub­lic meet­ing of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Com­mis­sion's new round of con­sul­ta­tions was the fail­ure to ad­dress rights and le­gal pro­tec­tion for the LGBT (les­bian, gay, bi­sex­u­al, trans­gen­der) com­mu­ni­ty.It was an is­sue raised by sev­er­al stake­hold­ers from di­verse back­grounds, in­clud­ing those with­in the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty and out­side, so­cial ac­tivists, church­go­ers and or­di­nary mem­bers of the pub­lic on Mon­day night at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' Sports and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre, St Au­gus­tine.

The meet­ing, host­ed by ra­dio talk show host Er­rol Fa­bi­en, and chaired by Prakash Ra­mad­har, Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs, was not a Q&A ses­sion but rather a fo­rum to hear the views of cit­i­zens.The floor was opened up to the pub­lic who were each al­lowed five min­utes on the mi­cro­phone in their first chance to tell the com­mis­sion what they thought of the draft re­port pub­lished on Jan­u­ary 30.

In an im­pas­sioned ad­dress, Col­in Robin­son, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of CAISO (Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion), said he felt pride that the draft doc­u­ment had ad­dressed the is­sue of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, but shame that "such an au­gust body that un­der­stood so clear­ly these is­sues would then recog­nise that sim­ply be­cause some peo­ple do not un­der­stand the is­sues, cit­i­zens like me should con­tin­ue to be de­nied the pro­tec­tion af­ford­ed to those peo­ple."

Page 12 of the draft re­port ad­dress­es LGBT rights, not­ing there is "a high lev­el of vi­o­lence and abuse" di­rect­ed against gay peo­ple and that "pro­pos­als were made that per­sons should not be fired from their jobs or ex­clud­ed from em­ploy­ment on the ba­sis of their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion."The re­port, how­ev­er, stops well short of en­shrin­ing full con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion to the gay com­mu­ni­ty, de­spite demon­strat­ing aware­ness of the se­ri­ous­ness of the dis­crim­i­na­tion.

It states: "The com­mis­sion recog­nised how di­vi­sive these is­sues were in com­pet­ing schools of thought," and that as a re­sult "sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and same-sex unions ought to be made the sub­ject of fur­ther na­tion­al dis­cus­sion in the con­text of pub­lic pol­i­cy."Robin­son de­scribed his "heart­break" that the com­mis­sion un­der­stood the is­sues so clear­ly and yet was un­will­ing to do any­thing about it.

He said young LGBT peo­ple in T&T, as well as those who lacked the sup­port of fam­i­ly and friends, would feel an even pro­founder sense of shame and dis­ap­point­ment when read­ing the re­port.An­oth­er speak­er, re­fer­ring to a na­tion­al poll tak­en in 2013 in which just 15 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion said they agreed with dis­crim­i­na­tion against gays, said that sug­gest­ed there was in fact con­sen­sus on the is­sue.

He re­mind­ed the com­mis­sion that the PNM's draft pol­i­cy on gen­der in 2004 stat­ed there would be fur­ther pub­lic dis­cus­sion."Here we are, ten years lat­er, dis­cussing it some more. I just won­der how long we will con­tin­ue dis­cussing the mat­ter," he added.

An elo­quent con­tributer from the floor end­ed by say­ing: "The idea that we need to wait on con­sen­sus be­fore ac­tive lead­er­ship is tak­en on this is­sue is re­pug­nant to jus­tice and sup­ports the no­tion that rights can be held hostage to the prej­u­dices of oth­er peo­ple un­til those prej­u­dices change."What the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty in T&T needs is very firm rec­om­men­da­tions that do not fa­cil­i­tate the kind of po­lit­i­cal cow­ardice ex­hib­it­ed by the T&T Gov­ern­ment in avoid­ing lead­er­ship on the is­sue of LGBT dis­crim­i­na­tion."

The LGBT is­sue

In a De­cem­ber 2012 let­ter pub­lished in the T&T Guardian, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Gov­ern­ment were giv­ing the is­sues due con­sid­er­a­tion."I do not sup­port dis­crim­i­na­tion in any form against any in­di­vid­ual, re­gard­less of their gen­der iden­ti­ty or sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. I share (the) view that the stig­ma­ti­sa­tion of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty in T&T is a mat­ter which must be ad­dressed on the grounds of hu­man rights and dig­ni­ty to which every in­di­vid­ual is en­ti­tled un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law," she wrote.

Noth­ing has emerged since that show of sup­port and many with­in the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty and out­side it voiced their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Gov­ern­ment's in­er­tia.

More meet­ings

Fur­ther pub­lic meet­ings will be held as part of the na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion, open to all who wish to at­tend to­day at the Ch­agua­nas Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion; Feb­ru­ary 17 at Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School, To­ba­go and Feb­ru­ary 19 at Paria Suites Ho­tel, La Ro­maine.

Oth­er is­sues brought up

Dis­abled rights

A group of deaf and hear­ing-im­paired peo­ple had the dis­cus­sion signed to them by an in­ter­preter. One deaf man stood and signed his re­sponse, which was read out by the in­ter­preter. He said there was "noth­ing in the doc­u­ment about peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties" and that deaf and blind peo­ple had wait­ed long enough for equal rights.

First Peo­ples' rights

Roger Be­lix said the doc­u­ment was an "in­sult" to the First Peo­ples, who were "ex­clud­ed in every part of our coun­try, even the rights to land," and con­tra­vened a UN rul­ing on the rights of in­dige­nous peo­ples.

Elect­ed Pres­i­dent and Speak­er of the House

Regi­nald Vi­dale, chair­man of the Dr Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al Com­mit­tee, said the elec­tion of the Pres­i­dent and the Speak­er of the House should take the form of a na­tion­al elec­tion and they should be "elect­ed by the peo­ple, not just by a few."

Right of re­call for MPs

Vi­dale al­so told the com­mis­sion that re­call must be a con­stituent-led mech­a­nism not Par­lia­ment-led. He was the on­ly mem­ber of the pub­lic to ad­dress re­call.