Who the cap fits

I’m sorry to tell the PNM this, but if the police bills do not make it through the Parliament, the Government will have to take some, if not most, of the blame. I believe that if the ruling party had not tried to hastily force such important legislation through the congress; if it had not short circuited the parliamentary process, the PNM would not be facing what is looking like certain legislative defeat — unless today’s meeting between Patrick Manning and Basdeo Panday achieves the miracle of consensus.

It is also my belief had it behaved otherwise the Government would have been able to leave the bills in the Senate, instead of having to pull them from the Upper House at the last minute to save face. Let me explain. By now, it should be crystal clear that Prime Minister Patrick Manning has had reform of the police service on his mind for a long time. His determination to change the management of the police service was reaffirmed on October 17, 2002, the very first day in the life of the Eighth Parliament, when Manning announced that the PNM was going to use its long awaited majority to introduce the first reading of the police bills and to “take them through all their stages immediately after the budget debate was over.” This is where the PNM’s problems with the bills began. Was it the correct moment to lay the police legislation for immediate debate when it was understood that there would be wide consultation before this was brought back to Parliament?

When Manning re-laid the bills in October 2002, only 36 people had asked for copies of the 2001 legislation and of these not all had submitted a response. Could those who had responded be considered representative of the wider population when furthermore, consultation had taken place in a time during which the nation’s attention was turned toward the imminent collapse of the UNC Government and when there had been no real campaign to educate the public on the bills? Manning obviously thought so. Indeed, he said as much in the House. It seemed that many, including the UNC, were of a different opinion. On November 15, 2002, Manning had to announce in the House that debate on the bills would be postponed. The explanation: during a meeting on November 13, 2002, with the UNC Opposition, Panday and his team “expressed the view, however, that the agreed process adopted in July 2001 for consultation with the national community on the legislative proposals was inadequate and that a further opportunity for such consultation on the Bills should be offered.”

Manning further told the House that November day that both Government and Opposition had agreed that after more comments had been received from the national community, the bills would go to a joint select committee of Parliament with which the technical team, responsible for drafting the bills, would work closely. Six weeks would be given for public comment and a further six weeks for the passage of the legislation. The Committee was indeed, appointed. It consisted of PNM, UNC and Independent parliamentarians and was chaired by former Attorney General, Glenda Morean. It laid its first report in February 21, 2003 as mandated, in which it stated that the committee had received a total of fifty-one (51) written submissions from various organisations and individuals. However, the Committee reported a setback. It said that “many of these submissions were lengthy and several highly complex legal issues had surfaced which required the consideration of the Committee.” In addition, the technical team to whom all written submissions were forwarded had not yet completed their analysis of these submissions. Six weeks was not enough time.

The Committee asked for more time and was given two more extensions. The Committee laid a total of three reports in the legislature. In its last report, brought to the Lower House by Morean on September 5, 2003, the Committee stated that its work was at an “advanced stage.” It recommended thus, that a new Committee be appointed in the next session to continue examining the matter. Its recommendation was voted on and the House decided that a new Committee be appointed. However, for some inexplicable reason, none was ever formed. Instead, the Government stopped the work on the bills, launched an expensive PR campaign and moved the bills to the Upper House where it probably felt certain it would have the support of the Independents. To date, no one has explained why the parliamentary process was brought to such an abrupt halt at such a crucial stage. Why did the PNM renege on its commitment to the UNC and to Parliament to finish the Committee’s work on the legislation, work which according to its own AG was at an advanced stage? Why the haste?

Was the Government under undue pressure from the business community? If the Government felt the Committee was taking too long, it should have said so in September 2003. It did not. It voted to form another. Surely, if a new Committee had been constituted, as agreed, it would by now have reported to Parliament and debate could today be taking place without all this chaos and without the need for costly political campaigns. What is more, the UNC would now have no defence for not supporting the bills because these would have been put through the process the UNC itself had demanded. It is this very haste that has perhaps also cost the Government the support of the Independents, no matter what spin it puts on bringing the bills back to the Lower House. The PNM well knows that if it was so confident of having the legislation make it through the Senate, it would have left the police bills right there. Passage of the bills in the Senate would have exerted more pressure on the UNC in the Lower House. Given the money the Government has spent on promoting the bills, added pressure on the UNC MPs is precisely what the PNM wanted.

The PNM probably could not go back and ask Independent senators to support legislation when it had promised that this would be subject to the complete scrutiny of a parliamentary committee before House debate. Certainly, if I were an Independent I’d be more than annoyed at such lack of respect for Parliament and for the substitution of the labours of a serious committee with a misleading political campaign. I’d also know that the high crime rate should never make anyone panic into passing key legislation recklessly. The ruling party can claim all it wants that its strategy was to put the UNC on the spot, the PNM, after hearing the Independents’ public condemnation of the bills, read the bleak writing on the Upper House wall and had to boot the bills back down to the one underneath.

The result: the police bills are now entangled in a bacchanal. They have gone from House to House, kicked around by a Government which was in too much of a hurry or under too much pressure to honour its parliamentary promise, a Government which for reasons yet to be explained, instead opted for costly political games. That’s why I say that if the bills do not pass and the much needed reform of the police service takes longer, the Government has to accept a great deal of the responsibility. Sorry.