Moonilal: No PIs, too much power for DPP

The bill, which seeks to abolish preliminary enquiries and to provide for the pre-trial procedure in respect of indictable offences and for ancillary matters, was passed in the Lower House on Friday with all Government members voting for and all Opposition members voting against; the bill required a simple majority for passage.

Moonilal yesterday in a release detailing his contribution to debate on the bill said that the Opposition United National Congress “stands ready, prepared, able and willing to support the Government and any other agency in fighting crime.” He had told the House that the issue of the removal of preliminary enquiries is an issue that was brought to Parliament by the previous People’s Partnership administration on two occasions.

“When we were there crime went down and that is a fact.

Murder was going down, serious crime went down, so we are committed to taking action to remove the backlog, to deal with the delays in the criminal justice system, and that is what we are about on this side. What we are not about is joining the Government to break the law.” Moonilal said the Opposition was not about helping the Rowley- led Government rewrite the Constitution through the back door nor undermining the constitutional structure and our constitutional value. Moonilal said the amendment will create a situation whereby the DPP, who advises the police, will now be determining whether cases are sufficient to move forward or not. He pointed out that the DPP had the initial sufficiency hearing, having to contribute to building the case, and he will be deciding whether that case is sufficient which is “literally himself to himself ”.

Moonilal said that the DPP’s office and the Constitution were never set up for this but rather the there is duty under Section 5 of the Constitution that a person charged and accused by the police be brought properly before an appropriate judicial authority.

“The DPP is not an appropriate judicial authority. This course of action removes the constitutional protection that the accused is entitled to.” Moonilal had also challenged the Attorney General to name one country in the Commonwealth that has done this.

“Such action as contained in the proposed amendment gives the DPP the power of filtration, of filtering cases and proffering an indictment to the High Court, before the same person prosecutes the matter.” Moonilal also reminded the House that in June 2014, then Opposition Leader and current Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley was very critical of the very measures that his administration were now trying to have enacted as law in Trinidad and Tobago.

He quoted Rowley as saying that “if the DPP is aggrieved at a decision of a magistrate with respect to discharging an accused person, the (DPP) may appeal to the High Court; that is in the existing law… the DPP may, if he thinks fit, refer the case back to the Magistrate with directions to deal with the case accordingly, and with such other directions as he may think proper”.

He pointed out that Rowley described that procedure as “madness” and asked how Government could put in a law that the DPP could give directions to a magistrate what he thinks proper and therefore can tell the magistrate what to do.

Moonilal said the amendments cannot work and no country in the world does something like this and, apart from the constitutional issue, it is not practical. He also called on the DPP to make his voice heard as he did on the jury matter, on these proposed amendments