by Ra­mona Ram­di­al

This past week, that of the 32nd an­niver­sary of the Coup at­tempt, saw fiery protest ac­tion due to the de­plorable state of the roads in some parts of the coun­try and to TTPS al­leged “crime boss” in­sti­ga­tion in oth­ers. It was al­so a week when Machel Mon­tano re­ceived the keys to the Cap­i­tal and launched his bi­og­ra­phy; Tribe’s band launch was a mas­sive cel­e­bra­tion while the West In­dies’ dom­i­na­tion by In­dia in ODI crick­et con­tin­ued. An­oth­er no­table head­line sto­ry was the 256 Cab­i­net re­cusals of Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters. The tim­ing of the quan­ti­fied re­minder is in­struc­tive as the PNM’s in­ter­nal elec­tions loom.

It was al­so a week in which the Privy Coun­cil con­firmed the right to bail ap­pli­ca­tion by those charged with mur­der. They up­held the de­ci­sion of the Court of Ap­peal and the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was again de­feat­ed in the Akil­li Charles case, led by Anand Ram­lo­gan SC. It is now square­ly up­on the High Court to de­ter­mine which lawyer’s ar­gu­ments should be re­ward­ed with bail for their mur­der ac­cused client. This is rem­i­nis­cent of “When ah gor­gon shoot an­oth­er gor­gon, is de doc­tor job to stitch up de or­gan. Is de lawyer job to keep him out­ta jail. He back on de street. Ter­ror in yuh tail!” sung by David Rud­der. There may be sit­u­a­tions where oth­er­wise law abid­ing cit­i­zens may be­come “per­pe­tra­tors of cir­cum­stance” and much of the pub­lic would pre­fer that those per­sons are treat­ed le­nient­ly but one won­ders how many in­no­cent cit­i­zens re­joiced in the judg­ment ver­sus those who have mur­dered…or plan to. The judg­ment is cer­tain­ly a tro­phy of le­gal acu­men but it is doubt­ful if it would add any­thing to crime re­duc­tion which is the pub­lic’s con­stant con­cern: “back on de street. Ter­ror in yuh tail” ah next mur­der­er make bail?

On the heels of this, a par­tic­u­lar sit­ting Sen­a­tor seemed to take cred­it for SC Ram­lo­gan’s vic­to­ry at the Privy Coun­cil in re­fer­ring, strange­ly, to a so­cial me­dia post of mine from a year ago when I crit­i­cised the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance ev­i­dent by non-sup­port of the Bail (Amend­ment) Bill in Par­lia­ment while seek­ing to score po­lit­i­cal plat­form points due to bail de­nial be­ing “there...in the law.” The con­fused Sen­a­tor is al­so un­aware that the Op­po­si­tion can bring their own Bills to Par­lia­ment and in­deed should bring an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple, as the Gov­ern­ment can­not bring ef­fec­tive laws them­selves. She is ad­vised to con­sult the Par­lia­men­tary Stan­dards Or­ders.

Re­gard­less, our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is in a mess. If the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was an In­de­pen­dent of­fice, pure­ly fo­cused on the pub­lic good, any de­feat would be a de­feat of the pub­lic in­ter­est. As it is, it is more like­ly in­ter­pret­ed as “PNM AG los­es to For­mer UNC AG,” com­ing on the heels of the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s “eat ah food” PNM lawyers com­ment, Trin­bag­on­ian jus­tice may be more a ques­tion of “red” or “yel­low” than of “guilty” or “not guilty.” Pro­cess­ing, in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of mat­ters are syn­ony­mous with in­ef­fi­cien­cy, as well. Even high pro­file pub­lic in­ter­est cas­es take decades to be heard. Such de­lays could make it eas­i­er for some well rep­re­sent­ed re­al men­aces to re­peat of­fend while out on bail.

In more as­sured ad­vo­ca­cy, the Re­unit­ed Farm­ers Group led by Ac­tivist Davi­ca Thomas held an­oth­er protest last Wednes­day in front of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture in Ch­agua­nas. This group has about 4,000 mem­bers who are all ei­ther for­mer Ca­roni work­ers or their chil­dren. They have not, af­ter 20 years since the clo­sure of Ca­roni 1975 Ltd, re­ceived their res­i­den­tial nor agri­cul­tur­al lots. The out­stand­ing num­ber of lots still to be giv­en out are 3,895 with 3,318 be­ing res­i­den­tial and 577 be­ing agri­cul­tur­al. Some of these 14 sites which were ear­marked for dis­tri­b­u­tion to the for­mer work­ers are lo­cat­ed at Fac­to­ry Road Num­bers 1 and 2, Beau­car­ro Road, Or­ange Field Road, Roops­ingh Road Num­ber 2 and the Ca­roni Sa­van­nah res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment.

The is­sue at this point is that the lit­i­ga­tion be­tween the EM­BD and its con­trac­tors has halt­ed the land dis­tri­b­u­tion to the de­serv­ing for­mer work­ers and their fam­i­lies since the change of Gov­ern­ment in 2015. The court in­junc­tion has im­mo­bilised the EM­BD. The Gov­ern­ment, the Union and the Op­po­si­tion have all aban­doned them. Where are the ques­tions or mo­tions filed in Par­lia­ment on their be­halves? Where are the Lawyers to file le­gal ac­tion on be­half of these for­mer work­ers to at least re­quest a lim­it­ed lift­ing of the in­junc­tion to ef­fect the land dis­tri­b­u­tion? These in­no­cent and de­serv­ing cit­i­zens are col­lat­er­al dam­age due to po­lit­i­cal and big busi­ness wran­gling.

To those who can as­sist, let the plea of a for­mer Ca­roni work­er: “I want my land be­fore I die” be a re­minder of ubiq­ui­tous in­jus­tices in Trinidad and To­ba­go, some per­pe­trat­ed by the State against the work­ing class. Jus­tice de­layed is jus­tice de­nied. Sad­ly, it seems that “Jus­tice de­nied” is all that we have in our na­tion.

As we cel­e­brate Eman­ci­pa­tion Day to­day, we con­tin­ue to strug­gle for free­dom and jus­tice. We must nev­er give up and nev­er stop fight­ing for our be­liefs. Hap­py Eman­ci­pa­tion, Trin­ba­go!