Last Wednesday in the House of Representatives the Minister of Foreign Affairs Surujrattan Rambachan used shock and awe tactics to make his point on why the Opposition should join the Government in passing the Constitution (Amendment) (Capital Offences) Bill 2011. For Rambachan, who is also the MP for Tabaquite, which is the constituency where the late Daniel Guerra lived, there was the need for him to make the point that the State needed to be just as brutal with murderers as those murderers were with their victims. The Opposition PNM had indicated during the debate that the Bill was flawed and that the separation of murder into three categories for which different penalties between hanging and life imprisonment could be imposed.
There is one school of thought that suggests that the essence of the penalty for murder should be based on outright revenge and that the only appropriate penalty is death. There is another school of thought that argues that there may be extenuating circumstances attached to the death of someone and that a person accused of such a murder should not suffer death, but rather have their liberty denied to them for the rest of their natural lives. This latter argument also relies upon the fear of conviction of the wrong person. The Government apparently tried to assuage the differing views within their ranks by going to Parliament with a Bill that could include compromises to satisfy the anti-death penalty lobby within their ranks.
However, the Opposition PNM did not give them a chance by demanding what they wanted to see in the Bill, especially since it is the Opposition (and not the Government) that gets to call the shots on this Bill seeing that a three-quarters majority is required.
For purposes of actual numbers, this Bill would require the votes of 32 MPs (as opposed to 31) because the Speaker has been elected from outside the House and, therefore, the House of Representatives is deemed to have 42 MPs. The Opposition showed no signs of fracturing over this Bill and the Government eventually decided that it would grant the Opposition some of their suggested amendments to the Bill and now treat murder as a single offence and not seek to have three categories for it with differing penalties.
At an earlier time when the UNC and the COP were in opposition, the PNM was able to get the support of the COP members to vote for important Bail legislation that required a special majority. This time, there was no faction, group or other collection of Opposition MPs who felt that they would deviate from their caucus. Of course, the Opposition will have to decide whether they will change their position now that the Government has acceded to some of their requests, namely the single category (as opposed to three) and the issue of time limits on the reports from the international human rights bodies on petitions of reprieve from persons on death row.
Minister Rambachan seemed to hint that the Government MPs were not being allowed a conscience vote on this matter and that a party whip was being used to enforce it. With two main parties in the People's Partnership and two lesser ones, it would be interesting to find out how the whip was being enforced in order to maintain government discipline. With the Opposition having succeeded in getting the Government to concede some of their amendments to the Bill, it would seem now that the offence of murder will not sub-divided for purposes of what the prosecution will seek in the courts. The only penalty that they can seek would now be the death penalty.
This may provide some internal pressures for the Government as there are some MPs who are already on the record as publicly disagreeing with the death penalty as a form of punishment. Will those disagreements be strong enough to fracture the Government or will the need for clear and demonstrated action on murder overcome second thoughts from anyone on the Government side? Given the argument that has been used by the Government that there is a correlation between the death penalty and the reduction of murders in two states in the USA (Alabama and California), the question now arises as to how badly the Government needs this Bill in its war on violent crime in the society.
It appears at first blush that they need the Bill really badly and they are prepared to make compromises with a Bill that they hope the Opposition PNM will support. The tussle here will become whose Bill is it anyway? The Government will argue that it was their initiative and the Opposition will argue that they were the ones who re-shaped it. This is known as consensus, but in our system of government the adversarial approach is required to govern. An important moment beckons tomorrow in the House of Representatives when the final vote is likely to be taken on this revised Bill.