Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh said yes­ter­day that the Op­po­si­tion UNC was still do­ing its “home­work” and work­ing out its po­si­tion on the Bail Bill, which is ex­pect­ed to be de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­day. The bill re­quires Op­po­si­tion votes for pas­sage.

Mean­while, dis­si­dent MP Dr Rai Rag­bir and his four col­leagues from the for­mer Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots team were de­cid­ing up to late yes­ter­day evening on their po­si­tion and whether to vote for the bill.

The Bail Bill is one of sev­er­al be­ing de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment this week. It re­quires a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage—26. It there­fore needs four Op­po­si­tion votes to add to the Gov­ern­ment’s 22.

On Wednes­day, Par­lia­ment will al­so de­bate the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (2024) bill and the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice) Bill 2024.

When the Bail Bill was pre­sent­ed in 2022, it didn’t get sup­port from Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors in the Sen­ate when Gov­ern­ment sought a one-year ex­ten­sion of its “sun­set clause.”

The Bail Amend­ment Bill 2024, which will be done to­day, seeks to im­pose con­di­tions on the ex­er­cise of the court’s dis­cre­tion in grant­i­ng bail to peo­ple charged with mur­der, cer­tain se­ri­ous of­fences and firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences.

Ac­cord­ing to the Par­lia­ment’s web­site, the bill seeks to give ef­fect to the rul­ing of the Privy Coun­cil in the case of Ak­ili Charles v State by pro­vid­ing that a judge or mas­ter may grant bail to a per­son charged with the of­fence of mur­der. The bill seeks to im­pose “an en­hanced re­ver­sal of bur­den” on peo­ple charged with mur­der and firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences, to re­quire such peo­ple to show ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances to jus­ti­fy grant­i­ng of bail.

The bill al­so seeks to re­quire a re­view of the Bail Act to be con­duct­ed every five years af­ter its com­mence­ment. It fur­ther seeks to pro­vide that bail grant­ed to an ac­cused un­der Sec­tion 5 of the act will con­tin­ue to ap­ply af­ter the bill comes in­to op­er­a­tion.

Yes­ter­day, In­dars­ingh, while speak­ing at the Op­po­si­tion’s me­dia brief­ing in Ch­agua­nas, said Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions that when good leg­is­la­tion is brought, the UNC would sup­port it. He said the UNC has sup­port­ed the leg­is­la­tion and a pre­vi­ous Bail Bill (pri­or to 2022) and in the pre­vi­ous week, al­so sup­port­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s Poly­graph bill which had a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote. He said Gov­ern­ment had said the lat­ter was an im­por­tant part of its an­ti-crime ar­moury.

In­dars­ingh said, “We’re cur­rent­ly do­ing our re­search, analysing the pros and cons and our po­si­tion be­cause we’re still in the process of do­ing our ‘home­work’ and I’m sure if it is in the in­ter­est of T&T’s cit­i­zens and it pro­tects the rights of all and sundry, I’m sure the ap­pro­pri­ate sup­port will be found.

“But if it is not, then we will make the de­ci­sion at the ap­pro­pri­ate time, but at this point in time, no con­crete de­ci­sion has been made be­cause of the short no­tice - it was on­ly laid in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day- and the work that we’re cur­rent­ly do­ing.”

The five Op­po­si­tion MPs who were on Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray’s Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots team in the re­cent UNC in­ter­nal elec­tion—Paray, Rag­bir, Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly and Rod­ney Charles—were mum on ques­tions posed by Guardian Me­dia re­gard­ing their stance on the Bail Bill.

Rag­bir re­cent­ly broke ranks with the Op­po­si­tion and vot­ed with the Gov­ern­ment on the Whistle­blow­er Pro­tec­tion Bill.

It was con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the group met via Zoom last evening to dis­cuss the bill and de­cide if to vote for it or not. While Rag­bir was evict­ed from the UNC’s cau­cus group What­sApp, the four oth­ers had in­for­ma­tion on the bill from the rest of the UNC MPs and Rag­bir is ex­pect­ed to vote on how the oth­er four de­cide.

Rag­bir’s de­ci­sion to not vote with the UNC will be heard by the par­ty’s dis­ci­pli­nary team soon.

The UNC yes­ter­day al­so deemed as “fake”, a doc­u­ment on so­cial me­dia pur­port­ing to be a brief on the dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ing.