Friday, February 25, 2011

PNM not voting for "hanging" bill; AG Ramlogan calls opposition "obstructionist"

The constitutional amendment bill that seeks to bring back hanging in Trinidad and Tobago will not pass in Parliament if opposition leader Dr Keith Rowley makes good on his threat to vote against it.

“We not voting for that,” Rowley said Thursday in an interview with the Guardian media.

Attorney General Anand Ramlogan has said the Government is reaching out and bending over backwards to get opposition support for the bill, which requires a constitutional majority that the government does not have. He said if the bill dies, no one should blame the government.

Ramlogan said the government has made significant amendments to the bill, on the request of the Opposition. 
“Although we do not agree with their demands, we have decided to give in and yield to those demands in the interest of Trinidad and Tobago,” he said.

He explained that the government accepted the two principal demands of the opposition - the removal of the categorisation of murders and an 18-month limit for appeals to the international human rights bodies.

“We have agreed to give in to those demands in the hope they will inspire responsible political behaviour in the interest of the country,” he added.

Ramlogan called the PNM “obstructionist and added that “partisan politics seems to be playing itself out while they strangle and frustrate the nation.”

He said the PNM is exhibiting "false pride" since it intends to withhold its political support because "it will make the PNM look bad that for eight years they didn’t do this and we are now doing it in eight months."

Ramlogan said “children will continue to go missing and end up murdered with their bloated bodies being found in the watercourses while the PNM continues to hold on to false pride....It is an attempt to sabotage our crime-fighting efforts and our efforts to restore law and order to this country.”

“It is clear that the Opposition does not want the death penalty to be enforced in this country,” Ramlogan claimed.

Rowley is adamant that the PNM will not support the legislation when it comes to a vote on Monday. “We are not afraid of the AG. We are not going to be bullied,” Rowley said. He said the PNM is not going to be a party of the government's "public relations gimmickry".

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Jai & Sero

Jai & Sero

Our family at home in Toronto 2008

Our family at home in Toronto 2008
Amit, Heather, Fuzz, Aj, Jiv, Shiva, Rampa, Sero, Jai