Gail Alexan­der

Ex­plain please, Prime Min­is­ter! Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley has asked act­ing Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith to call on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ex­plain in de­tail how the procla­ma­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Of­fences) Act 2011 arose. Backed by a large crowd of marchers-in­clud­ing some for­mer po­lit­i­cal foes-Row­ley took a pe­ti­tion to Hamel-Smith along with a pe­ti­tion of 25,000 sig­na­tures which the Op­po­si­tion PNM said they gath­ered in 48 hours.

Hamel-Smith is act­ing Pres­i­dent in the ab­sence of Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards who left for New Zealand yes­ter­day to at­tend a con­fer­ence and will pro­ceed on hol­i­days af­ter. The is­sue of Sec­tion 34 has con­tin­ued to gen­er­ate con­tro­ver­sy de­spite last week's re­peal of the leg­is­la­tion by Par­lia­ment. The Gov­ern­ment moved to re­peal the sec­tion af­ter grow­ing con­cern that it will al­low peo­ple who had cas­es out­stand­ing for more than ten years, in­clud­ing busi­ness­men Ish Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son who are fac­ing fraud charges, to go free.

Hun­dreds call on Gov­ern­ment for an­swers in march with Row­ley

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley led the Op­po­si­tion's march con­cern­ing the gen­e­sis of the is­sue-the Au­gust 31 procla­ma­tion of the clause. Walk­ing with Row­ley and PNM mem­bers were for­mer PP?part­ner, Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah, BIG­WU's Vin­cent Cabr­era, DNA?leader Kirk Meighoo and for­mer COP deputy leader Robert May­ers.

Al­so present were for­mer Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Michael Williams, Kirk Wait­he, of Fix­in' T&T, plus ac­tivist Raul Bermudez, busi­ness peo­ple, pen­sion­ers and trade union mem­bers. Ad­dress­ing the crowd, Ab­du­lah not­ed the "peo­ple pow­er" and called for them to or­gan­ise more broad­ly in­to a "grand coali­tion of a peo­ple's democ­ra­cy to bring about the kind of gov­er­nance of eq­ui­ty and jus­tice" which, he said, T&T yearned for.

The march, which be­gan at 1.30 pm out­side the Red House on Aber­crom­by Street, wend­ed its way peace­ful­ly to­wards the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah and in a snaking red line around the Sa­van­nah to Pres­i­dent's House. Row­ley en­tered Pres­i­dent's House at 3.05 pm bear­ing the pe­ti­tion. He was ac­com­pa­nied by Ab­du­lah, Cabr­era, Meighoo and PNM's Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, Franklin Khan and Fitzger­ald Hinds. They spent al­most 50 min­utes with Hamel-Smith.

The pe­ti­tion not­ed is­sues from the No­vem­ber rul­ing by Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh on the ex­tra­di­tion of Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son to the US to the procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34. The PNM not­ed that when it was pro­claimed, none of the as­sur­ances they said they were giv­en in the Par­lia­ment were met.

The pe­ti­tion stat­ed that at the time the sec­tion was pro­claimed, "the Jus­tice Min­is­ter who had the port­fo­lio re­spon­si­ble for the Cab­i­net note that the At­tor­ney?Gen­er­al prompt­ly act­ed up­on, en­joyed and con­tin­ues to en­joy a close re­la­tion­ship with at least one of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the amnesty in the act."

Row­ley lat­er told the crowd-gath­ered in the Sa­van­nah op­po­site Pres­i­dent's House-that he took the is­sue to the Pres­i­dent's of­fice since the head of state is not a rub­ber stamp and is re­spon­si­ble for re­ceiv­ing re­ports from the PM on the state of T&T.

He said he asked the Pres­i­dent to trace the doc­u­ments that sought procla­ma­tion of the clause back­wards to its ori­gin and to make sure that at every stage of pro­ceed­ings-in­clud­ing the draft­ing of the Cab­i­net note on the is­sue-that rules and reg­u­la­tions were fol­lowed. He al­so asked the Pres­i­dent to de­mand a writ­ten ex­pla­na­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter on the rea­sons for the de­ci­sion of the Cab­i­net which act­ed in breach of Par­lia­ment's trust.

Row­ley said he al­so wants the Pres­i­dent to ur­gent­ly raise the na­tion­al out­rage on the is­sue with the Prime Min­is­ter. As well, Row­ley re­quest­ed the Pres­i­dent to ask the Prime Min­is­ter to re­voke the ap­point­ments of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney The pe­ti­tion al­so wants the Pres­i­dent to re­port to the coun­try on the find­ings.

"We're cer­tain the Pres­i­dent will talk to the na­tion on these mat­ters. T&T is in cri­sis,"?Row­ley said. Ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of be­tray­ing the Par­lia­ment and us­ing the Cab­i­net, Row­ley said the Prime Min­is­ter had at­tend­ed last week's Par­lia­ment de­bate on the is­sue, yet didn't speak. "If a cri­sis like this had risen in New Zealand, In­dia, Aus­tralia or Cana­da, you think the Prime Min­is­ter there would have gone to Par­lia­ment and had not a word to say?

"We're gov­erned by a coali­tion and its leader had noth­ing to say and the sec­ond tier leader-of the COP-had noth­ing to say," he said.