The rare dis­play of bi­par­ti­san­ship that al­lowed for the pas­sage of the Bail (Amend­ment) Bill, 2024, in the House and Sen­ate came dur­ing a pe­ri­od of un­prece­dent­ed leg­isla­tive work by par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.

Lo­cal law­mak­ers al­so man­aged to de­bate and pass two oth­er crit­i­cal pieces of leg­is­la­tion dur­ing a se­ries of sit­tings held ahead of Par­lia­ment’s an­nu­al break. Once they are con­sis­tent­ly en­forced, these new­ly passed laws could strike at the twin plagues of cor­rup­tion and crime.

More of­ten than not, bills re­quir­ing a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage fail, of­ten by the slimmest of mar­gins be­cause of a tiny ma­jor­i­ty held by the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion. It was just in 2022 that a pre­vi­ous ver­sion of the Bail Amend­ment Bill col­lapsed in the Sen­ate, falling short by a sin­gle vote. A sur­pris­ing twist on that usu­al out­come came dur­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s third at­tempt to pass whistle­blow­er leg­is­la­tion.

In the face of Op­po­si­tion re­sis­tance, the ex­pect­ed fail­ure of the Whistle­blow­er Pro­tec­tion Bill turned out dif­fer­ent­ly on­ly be­cause Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir broke ranks with his UNC col­leagues and vot­ed for its pas­sage. The leg­is­la­tion got past an­oth­er hur­dle ear­li­er this week when it reached the Up­per House with 23 sen­a­tors vot­ing in favour and six vot­ing against.

And it was just a few days ago that law­mak­ers gave unan­i­mous sup­port to the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Test­ing and Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion) Bill, which Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds de­scribed as a vi­tal tool in the fight against crime. This law tar­gets cor­rupt pub­lic of­fi­cers in sen­si­tive po­si­tions who en­rich them­selves at the ex­pense of oth­ers. These of­fi­cers will now have to un­der­go poly­graph test­ing.

These re­cent­ly passed laws add to the tougher pack­age of leg­is­la­tion law en­force­ment of­fi­cials have been clam­our­ing for as they go af­ter crim­i­nals. The most crit­i­cal of the three is the lat­est amend­ment to the Bail Act, which pro­vides re­stric­tions on bail for in­di­vid­u­als charged with se­ri­ous of­fences.

This leg­is­la­tion is in re­sponse to the Privy Coun­cil rul­ing in the case of Ak­ili Charles that al­lows a judge or mas­ter to grant bail to a per­son charged with mur­der, im­pos­ing con­di­tions on the ex­er­cise of the court’s dis­cre­tion in grant­i­ng bail to per­sons charged with mur­der and oth­er se­ri­ous of­fences, in­clud­ing firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences.

All these ef­forts are ex­pect­ed to put this coun­try in a bet­ter place, giv­ing crime fight­ers and pros­e­cu­tors an ad­van­tage as they go af­ter not on­ly the most vi­o­lent of­fend­ers but the white-col­lar crooks who ben­e­fit from le­gal loop­holes and out-of-date laws. The onus is now on the var­i­ous crim­i­nal jus­tice en­ti­ties—not just the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS)—to make full use of these new laws and those al­ready on the books, ap­ply­ing them to stop the un­re­lent­ing as­sault on this coun­try’s peace, se­cu­ri­ty, and de­vel­op­ment.

The par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are to be com­mend­ed for briefly set­ting aside their po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences, some­thing that doesn’t hap­pen very of­ten in T&T, to de­bate and pass these very im­por­tant pieces of leg­is­la­tion.

Now the re­al work be­gins. An im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty should be the re­peat crim­i­nal of­fend­ers who have been brazen­ly pil­lag­ing, plun­der­ing, as­sault­ing, and worse while out on bail.

Pro­tec­tion for cit­i­zens to blow the whis­tle on fraud­u­lent prac­tices and con­sis­tent use of avail­able tech­nol­o­gy to de­tect cor­rupt prac­tices are long over­due. There are now few­er ex­cus­es that can be used for the on­go­ing fail­ure to fight crime.