KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

While the Gov­ern­ment has sig­nalled a po­ten­tial re-in­tro­duc­tion of the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) bill, the Op­po­si­tion is stand­ing firm in its re­jec­tion, in­sist­ing it will not sup­port the leg­is­la­tion if pro­posed amend­ments con­tin­ue to be ig­nored.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris al-Rawi and Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land have both ex­pressed se­ri­ous con­cerns over claus­es pre­vi­ous­ly re­ject­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie.

Speak­ing at an Op­po­si­tion press con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Scot­land ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment should not rush to pass sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion with­out ad­dress­ing crit­i­cal is­sues, such as pro­tec­tions for the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) and the des­ig­na­tion of cer­tain ar­eas as crime hot spots.

“I think that this bill should stay in re­cess for quite a long time un­til prop­er, mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion oc­curs,” Scot­land said. “Any­thing re­lat­ed to hot spot ar­eas must be da­ta-dri­ven and fact-dri­ven, and it must not car­ry the stench of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.”

Al-Rawi added that the Gov­ern­ment does not need the ZOSO bill to tack­le crime ef­fec­tive­ly. He point­ed out that joint po­lice and army pa­trols can al­ready be de­ployed to pro­tect cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly in high-crime ar­eas.

“We still have the po­lice. We still have joint pa­trols. You can flood the streets right now. All that is re­quired is to let the po­lice car­ry out ar­rests and search­es,” Al-Rawi said. “Don’t be fooled in­to think­ing this bill is the on­ly way to achieve the ef­fect of a Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions.”

Al-Rawi al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for seek­ing sup­port from the in­de­pen­dent bench while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ac­cus­ing two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors of al­leged­ly break­ing the law to gain favours.

More than 100 amend­ments were pro­posed by the Op­po­si­tion and the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, but all were re­ject­ed by Je­re­mie. The bill ul­ti­mate­ly col­lapsed in the Sen­ate last month af­ter eight in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against it.