As the call for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to sup­port the Bail Amend­ment Bill con­tin­ues to be made by both Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate cit­i­zens, the par­ty says it will not make de­ci­sions based on emo­tions.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at their Charles Street, Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day, the UNC said al­though emo­tions are high in the coun­try, they will make sober de­ci­sions as they be­lieve the coun­try does not need laws to solve crime.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for San Juan, Sad­dam Ho­sein said there needs to be a com­plete re­form of the Ju­di­cial sys­tem.

“We have enough laws, what we need is more judges, what we need is to fix the prison sys­tem, what we need is to re­source the po­lice,” Ho­sein said.

He said the coun­try has a prob­lem with en­forc­ing ex­ist­ing laws as he ex­plained the par­ty’s rea­son­ing for with­hold­ing sup­port for the Bail Amend­ment Bill.

“Mur­der, kid­nap­ping, rape, sex­u­al of­fences are all crimes. They are il­le­gal there­fore the court can in fact de­ny a per­son bail if you are charged with those of­fences. What the gov­ern­ment had pro­posed to do was de­ny a per­son bail for a pe­ri­od of 120 days au­to­mat­i­cal­ly if you are charged with a firearm of­fence,” Ho­sein said.

He said the Ev­i­dence Amend­ment Bill brings no new leg­is­la­tion, as he point­ed out that video ev­i­dence is al­ready ac­cept­ed in the courts.

“What we have seen is that this Bill will add to that greater com­plex­i­ty of in­ves­ti­ga­tions which will in fact cause more and more ob­jec­tions where de­fence coun­sel in court can have a greater op­por­tu­ni­ty in get­ting the ev­i­dence col­lect­ed thrown out.”

Ho­sein said he does not be­lieve these changes will work prop­er­ly in the cur­rent Ju­di­cial sys­tem.

“Imag­ine if we had prop­er cam­era footage, GPS track­ing, tech­nol­o­gy area sur­veil­lance how dif­fer­ent the land­scape in terms of crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion would have been,” he said.

Re­spond­ing to calls from cit­i­zens to bring back the death penal­ty, Ho­sein said the law of the land re­mains one where a per­son con­vict­ed of mur­der is sen­tenced to death by hang­ing.

He said in 2011, the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion brought the Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment Cap­i­tal Of­fences Bill to Par­lia­ment.

The Bill pro­posed to cat­e­gorise mur­der, deal with is­sues of de­lay where a per­son must be ex­e­cut­ed five years af­ter their con­vic­tion and for the re-im­ple­men­ta­tion of the death penal­ty.

He said at that time, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) did not sup­port the Bill.

“Ten years has passed and not a sin­gle new idea, a plan or a pol­i­cy for the reim­ple­men­ta­tion of the death penal­ty,” Ho­sein said.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor, David Nakhid said the UNC must make sober de­ci­sions de­spite the emo­tion­al state of the coun­try.

“We un­der­stand the tone of the coun­try but we must be the adults in the room,” Nakhid said.

He sent out a cau­tion to the Gov­ern­ment, say­ing they need to be mind­ful of how they as­cribe la­bels.

“I train every morn­ing at Chaf­ford Court (peo­ple) from Mor­vant, from Beetham, come and train with me every morn­ing and they feel when they hear those words ‘beast’ and ‘crea­tures’ and ‘mon­sters’ and these are hard-work­ing young black men and brown men. They feel un­der at­tack.”