Gail Alexan­der

The con­tro­ver­sial Bail Bill was suc­cess­ful­ly passed in the Sen­ate last night and it’s now head­ing to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

The gov­ern­ment se­cured pas­sage of the bill—with an amend­ment—with sup­port from the ma­jor­i­ty of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

How­ev­er, the op­po­si­tion and two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors ab­stained from vot­ing.

The bill de­nies bail for 120 days first-time of­fend­ers held with firearms as well as any pro­hib­it­ed weapons—from au­to­mat­ic weapons to bombs, grenades and mis­siles. It al­so lim­its bail for that pe­ri­od for those ac­cused of traf­fick­ing in such weapons.

An ac­cused per­son will be able to ap­ply for bail af­ter 120 days but will have to prove there are ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances that war­rant grant­i­ng of bail.

“This bill, as well as the oth­er Bail bill passed in Au­gust and the Firearms Bill, are the most im­por­tant we’ve done—this is where we draw the line in the sand in the war against crime,” At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi told the Guardian af­ter the bill’s pas­sage at 6.44 pm.

Pas­sage of the bill which was se­cured via a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote oc­curred in enough time for it to be an­nounced - tri­umphant­ly- at the start of last night’s PNM meet­ing in Ch­agua­nas.

The bill was passed by a to­tal of 22 votes; from 15 gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors plus sup­port from sev­en of the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors present.

How­ev­er In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors Paul Richards and An­tho­ny Vieira ab­stained from vot­ing while sev­en oth­er in­de­pen­dents vot­ed for it.

Al­so ab­stain­ing were the six op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors present. No one vot­ed against the bill.

Al Rawi steered the bill through dif­fi­cult straits in the Sen­ate since last Tues­day, con­clud­ed the de­bate yes­ter­day and took the bill through its fi­nal com­mit­tee stages. He bat­tled with re­peat­ed con­cerns on the bill from op­po­si­tion and some in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly on pos­si­ble po­ten­tial for peo­ple to be “framed” or set up and be de­nied bail for 120 days.

Viera and Richards voiced con­cerns, called for some as­sur­ances and added that they want­ed to sup­port the bill strong­ly. Richards said he was “dy­ing to sup­port the bill” and on­ly wished to bal­ance peo­ple’s rights.

Al Rawi told them that the prime min­is­ter in­struct­ed him to ex­am­ine leg­is­la­tion to deal with “frame-ups” and sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. He an­nounced he would soon present leg­is­la­tion to in­tro­duce a crim­i­nal charge re­gard­ing the fram­ing of a per­son done by po­lice or any law en­force­ment of­fi­cial.

Mean­while, the Bail Bill would be sent to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for de­bate like­ly by next week Fri­day, Al Rawi added.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials last night ex­pressed re­lief and hap­pi­ness to Trinidad Guardian that their calls on the bail bill were heed­ed. They said it would as­sist their “ar­moury” in the crime bat­tle.