Dookeran: Manning and Panday must talk

ST AUGUSTINE MP Winston Dookeran yesterday urged Prime Minister Patrick Manning and Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday to find a way to pass the Police Reform Bills in Parliament and ensure that they help to reduce crime in Trinidad and Tobago. Addressing a luncheon hosted by the Greater Chaguanas Chamber of Industry and Commerce at Kampo Restaurant in Chaguanas, Dookeran declared: “It is important that this dialogue between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition does take place and that we look at contending views. In the final analysis, the important aspect of the legislation before us is the thrust that it will have in and among the population of the land.”

While underscoring the need for effective anti-crime legislation, Dookeran claimed Government was bombarding the nation “with propaganda on the issue of converting the Police Reform Bills into anti-crime legislation. It is important that we do have a serious national attack on the crime situation in TT. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a matter of extreme concern for all of us. There has never been anyone in this country of any reasonable standard who has argued against dealing with this problem. The crime situation is essentially a management problem. The existing framework in the country must be utilised in a management sense to have better anti-crime measures effected in this country. We must not see this purely in legal terms,” the UNC MP declared. Reiterating the Opposition’s concerns about a lack of safeguards in the legislation (which will be debated in the Senate on June 29), Dookeran warned against underestimating “the damage we might do to our own democracy without checks and balances. 

The police reform legislation is something that must be promoted, but only in the context that we don’t use the hysteria that we have in the country,  and it is wrong for the Government to create even more panic in this situation at this point in time,” he stated. The UNC MP claimed Government has a track record of introducing legislation to regulate professions, and local doctors were all too aware of that. “We do not want to live in a society where there are Government controls over all of the professions in the society, including the Public Service,” he said. Dookeran said the Government and Opposition must “deal with this very serious issue of crime in the way that the citizens of this country deserve that it should be dealt with.”