Senator blames courts for domestic violence in society

Independent Senator Eastlyn McKenzie yesterday blamed the courts for much of the domestic violence in the society today. She was speaking in the Senate on the Family Court Proceedings Bill and the Mediation Bill. Calling for greater consideration of sociological and cultural factors, McKenzie said customs and heritage  played a big part in shaping people’s attitudes and in determining how they behaved. “I think that when many of our domestic matters are settled legally, with only the legal issues being the deciding factor, they contribute to domestic violence. And I say so with no apologies,” she said.

“I would tell you — and you would know Mr vice president (Rawle Titus) —  that in a society like Tobago when a man says ‘before I marry I have a piece of land’ and he builds his own house, then there is some conflict in the family and a magistrate tells that man ‘you cannot go back to the house that you built,’ he is not going to take it lightly. He is going to say ‘If I can’t live in it, nobody can live in it,’ ” McKenzie explained. She added that out of that type of decision from the courts, a number of women had met their deaths. In supporting the idea of mediation as a form of  addressing disputes,  McKenzie said that on the one  hand a mediator (as opposed to a judge) might sit down and listen to a man crying and saying “I  bring stone. I cut wood, I did this and that to build my house. That woman I marry to never know when I build my house.” McKenzie noted that when such a man “sits down and studies that he is homeless in a house that he constructed, he is going to behave differently from a man who is renting a place.”

McKenzie also stated that one could not make each centre available only to the people who live in the particular area. She said in a small society like Tobago a person may want to come to Trinidad to resolve their conflict rather than deal with it in Tobago simply because, she said, if someone like herself or vice president Titus were to be put on a Mediation Council, a large portion of Tobago would decide that they know them too well and would say “I am not going to Mr Titus because I don’t want him to know my business.” In such an instance, a Tobagonian might tell himself that he prefers to go to somebody “who does not know me but who understands the circumstances under which I live.” She said therefore that each Centre should  be open to people from all over the country. “Familiarity must not be the reason that people would not want to come to a Mediation Centre,” she added. McKenzie said the Centres also had to take into consideration the law of individual differences. “We say in Tobago that what is joke for schoolchildren is death for crapaud.” She said what one person may consider to be very trivial, another may consider to be a serious offence. Therefore the rules of mediation could not be static, but had to be flexible, the Independent Senator stressed.

In the Senate:

AG gets baptism of Opposition fire on Court and Mediation Bills

As he delivered his maiden contribution in the Senate yesterday,  piloting the Family Court Proceedings Bill and the Mediation Bill, Attorney General John Jeremie  took no credit, ensuring instead that the  record and posterity would recognise the efforts of his predecessor, Glenda Morean, in this regard. He was however accorded a baptism of Opposition fire from Senator Wade Mark, who did not grab the olive branch held out by Jeremie. Jeremie  said he could lay claim to very little in the two Bills, which he described as “a product of love” from the former Attorney General. Jeremie said Family Court pilot project would be launched in January 2004.

He said the approach adopted by Government was to legislate for the pilot project involving the Family Court and to derive lessons learnt from this for drafting legislation to permanently deal with the issues. He said the pilot project was originally due to start in mid-October. However, he said, it was necessary that the court be housed in a separate location. NIP-DEC was identified and work began at NIPDEC to prepare the building for use as a family court. It is due to be completed in eight weeks time, he said. He added that the presence of the Family Court would radically change the way in which family disputes would be resolved.  He said with the inclusion of a proper mediation unit within the Family Court building it was expected that citizens of Trinidad and Tobago would have a more affordable and acceptable mechanism for the resolution of family disputes.

On the Mediation Bill, the AG pointed out that it provided the framework for court-annexed mediation and for mediation under the Family Court system as well as for community mediation. One of the things the Bill provided, he said, was for confidentiality by all persons in the mediation process. It also provided for immunity from lawsuit to all certified mediators and other persons involved in the mediation process. The Attorney General asked members to support Government in the same spirit that led to consensus on the Report of the Joint Select Committee. “We all eat the same food, drive on the same highways, have the same goals for our children,” he said, urging MPs to support “good legislation and not play politics.” But Opposition Senator Wade Mark was not buying into the AG’s olive branch rhetoric. Mark slammed Government and the new AG for “overthrowing” the Community Mediation Act, (passed during the UNC’s tenure) and for “making a mockery” of the community mediation effort started by the previous administration.  In what became a  chorus in his contribution, he called on Government to put the Bills for study before a Joint Select Committee. He said the PNM had closed down all the mediation centres  in the country. “Mr AG, if you want our cooperation, come clean,” Mark declared.

The Opposition Senator also lamented that the Domestic Violence Act was not included in the Schedule of Acts covered in the Mediation Bill. Saying that wives and women were being murdered every day, Mark accused the AG of bringing “incomplete, half-baked, wishy-washy, ho-dge-podge, cut and paste, disjointed, ad hoc” legislation to Parliament.  He said the AG was “set up” by his former colleague (Morean) into bringing this “nonsense, sorry... this sloppy, weak legislation” which the Opposition could not support. He also questioned the power of the Mediation Board to decide “what people should study” before they become mediators, saying that the bill converted the Board into a virtual university.  He also saw as “dangerous” the fact that there was no provision in the legislation to challenge the decision of the Board. Mark digressed to note that government institutions such as the Library “from which the Prime Minister only recently  had to beat a hasty retreat,” FCB and the airport, were being subjected to bomb threats. “Is the PNM at war with somebody or somebody at war with the PNM?” he asked.

UNC mediation centres stillborn, says Minister

By Clint Chan Tack

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT Minister Mustapha Abdul-Hamid walked into a firestorm of criticism yesterday when he described community mediation centres (CMC) built under the UNC as “dead on arrival” and “stillborn.” Speaking during debate on amendments to the Family Proceedings and Mediation Acts in the Senate, Abdul-Hamid said the UNC had no proper systems to evaluate the effectiveness of its CMC pilot project which began in 2000, and has since ended. The Minister said the Community Mediation Act 1998, under which the CMCs were created, was badly flawed with magistrates being unable to formally refer matters for mediation because there was no provision for them to consult the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). He said what happened instead was a system of informal referrals that cannot be tenable.
 
“We must have proper systems. There were fundamental flaws in the Act in the first place,” he said. The Minister claimed that former attorney-general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj failed to properly consult the Judiciary on the CMCs and ensure that they perform their designated function to ease the burden on the courts. “This is the kind of madness that characterised the last regime,” he declared to vigorous desk-thumping from the Government benches. The Minister added that Government was now working to ensure that the CMCs are set up properly and can function efficiently. However, Opposition Senator Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan accused Abdul-Hamid of “misleading the House” and said the CMCs had functioned well since 2001. “Mediation is progressive legislation. I only hear problems (from the Government). This is amazing!” she quipped. Seepersad-Bachan added that when the UNC first brought the mediation legislation to Parliament in 1998, the then Opposition PNM was all for it.
Earlier in the debate, Independent Senator Dr Eastlyn Mckenzie suggested that the bills be referred to a joint select parliamentary committee because of their complexity. She suggested that the committee be given a two to three-week time-frame to complete its work.