UNC not supporting Police Bills

CLAIMING that President George Maxwell Richards will be a political pawn in Government’s alleged plans to transform the Police Service into the PNM’s private army if the Police Reform Bills are passed in the Parliament, Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday declared that the UNC “will be unable to support the Bills” and cannot support any type of oppressive legislation against the people of Trinidad and Tobago. Addressing a public meeting at the Aranjuez Community Centre on Monday night, Panday said although the legislation allows the President to make appointments to the proposed Police Management Authority (PMA) after consultations with the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader, the President as “a creature of any government” was likely to act on the advice of the former rather than the latter.

He also told UNC supporters that President Richards was “the son of George Armsby Richards, first Attorney General of the PNM” and because Government has an in-built majority in the Lower House, Richards could only be returned to office “if the PNM wants him there.” “If he is told to appoint certain people to the PMA by Mr Manning or the Cabinet or whoever, the chances are he will succumb to that. Even if he gets advice from the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition, whose advice will he take? The Leader of the Opposition or the one he knows which side his bread is buttered? The danger is the Prime Minister and by extension the Cabinet and the Government can control the Police Service. Once you control the Police Service it becomes a private army. My job is to protect the innocent citizens from abuse by the Government and I’m going to do that!” Panday declared.

While saying the Opposition would keep an open mind about the legislation, Panday suggested that the UNC’s mind was already made up. “We believe this law is going to be oppressive to the people.  Unless we get the kind of response that we require, I am afraid that we will be unable to support the Bills,” the UNC leader lamented. Panday added that “one Act which would do more to prevent crime would have been the Equal Opportunity Act” because discrimination was the root cause of all crime in TT. Panday accused the PNM of trying to “sanitise” the legislation as advanced by Sir Ellis Clarke’s technical team. St Joseph MP Gerald Yetming said as Prime Minister, Panday did the “proper thing” when he tabled the Police Bills in Parliament for the first time in July 13, 2001.

“He took the Bills and without examining them in detail, the contents of the Bills, laid them in Parliament as they were presented by Sir Ellis Clarke. It would have been an insult to Sir Ellis and his team if the Government, having looked at the legislation they came up with, made any changes and then put them to Parliament. “I believe that there would have been accusations from all fronts, that we (UNC) interfered with the recommendations of Sir Ellis,” he declared. Predicting that the Bills would be defeated, Yetming said: “The UNC has to get back into office for crime to go down.”