Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress will start its own an­ti-crime talks with the pub­lic, as a pro­posed dis­cus­sion with the Gov­ern­ment is yet to get off the ground.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed the move yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing ques­tions by Guardian Me­dia on the fu­ture of the Gov­ern­ment-Op­po­si­tion talks. This as the coun­try’s mur­der count stood at 508.

At the UNC’s Pave­ment Re­port in Pe­nal on Thurs­day, UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal slammed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s “jet­ting off” to Sau­di Ara­bia and oth­er places for al­most a month, leav­ing the talks in abeyance.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said she made fu­tile calls for such talks in April, but the Gov­ern­ment on­ly agreed af­ter Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo in Sep­tem­ber urged col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts in the an­ti-crime fight.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed her will­ing­ness to work with the Gov­ern­ment. Row­ley be­gan cor­re­spon­dence with her, but it halt­ed when she said he had not replied to her Oc­to­ber 14 let­ter seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on sev­er­al points. Cit­ing pro­to­col on this, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­fused to meet the No­vem­ber 9 dead­line set by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour to name her team for the talks.

Ar­mour, who is the con­venor, is out of the coun­try like the Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ters Stu­art Young and Fitzger­ald Hinds, who are among the Gov­ern­ment’s team for the talks.

Act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Mar­vin Gon­za­les was asked yes­ter­day if the dead­line would be ex­tend­ed and for re­sponse to the Op­po­si­tion’s ac­cu­sa­tion against Row­ley of “jet­ting off”.

Gon­za­les said, “I will al­low the sub­stan­tive At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Prime Min­is­ter to re­spond to the Op­po­si­tion on this mat­ter.”

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the state of the talks “is the same as the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery, crime sym­po­sium, agri­cul­ture sym­po­sium and nu­mer­ous ‘in­ves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee’ pro­pa­gan­da gim­micks”.

“By now, every­one knows the Gov­ern­ment was clear­ly on an­oth­er PR gim­mick with the talks and Row­ley had no in­ten­tion of ac­cept­ing help from any stake­hold­er. His in­sis­tence on keep­ing Hinds as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter shows that he’s un­con­cerned about pub­lic safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty. Added to that now, we have the very in­com­pe­tent Mar­vin Gon­za­les as act­ing AG. It’s ir­re­spon­si­ble to ap­point him to act in such an im­por­tant po­si­tion,” she added.

On whether the talks are off, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I’m al­ways com­mit­ted to work­ing with any­one to im­prove se­cu­ri­ty. Since the start of the year we’ve been hav­ing pri­vate an­ti-crime con­sul­ta­tions with var­i­ous groups. We’ll con­tin­ue do­ing so but we’ll al­so be­gin an­ti-crime con­sul­ta­tions with the pub­lic where cit­i­zens can en­gage.”

The Op­po­si­tion plans to use the con­sul­ta­tions to col­lect in­for­ma­tion and da­ta, “to share with the Gov­ern­ment when­ev­er the Prime Min­is­ter de­cides to at­tend the an­ti-crime talks with stake­hold­ers”.

“We’ll al­so be us­ing the con­sul­ta­tions to ex­plain our plans to the pub­lic, es­pe­cial­ly to bring clar­i­ty to our pro­posed stand your ground laws and to ex­plain why cit­i­zens should be giv­en le­gal firearms,” she added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the con­sul­ta­tions will al­so of­fer some train­ing on an­ti-crime mea­sures which cit­i­zens can ap­ply to pro­tect them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ties. “We’re al­so work­ing to have com­mu­ni­ties gat­ed with­in UNC-held cor­po­ra­tion ar­eas and we’ve re­ceived a num­ber of re­quests for con­sul­ta­tions with the pub­lic.”

The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance, led by Gary Grif­fith, will be part of the con­sul­ta­tions.

The con­sul­ta­tions with the pub­lic will be sim­i­lar to the UNC’s bud­get con­sul­ta­tions but will be done in such a way that peo­ple will feel com­fort­able giv­ing their views and they will not be broad­cast pub­licly.