Geisha Kow­lessar

Se­nior Coun­sel Mar­tin Daly says crim­i­nals must not be al­lowed to car­ry out hits in broad day­light and then take a cel­e­bra­to­ry drink.He made the state­ment while com­ment­ing on the killing of Dana See­ta­hal, SC, yes­ter­day.Say­ing he was griev­ed by the loss of his col­league and close friend, Daly de­scribed her mur­der as yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the preva­lence of im­puni­ty in the coun­try, as he al­so re­ferred to last week's mur­der out­side the Ari­ma Mag­is­trates Court.

"For years I have com­plained about the im­puni­ty with which all cit­i­zens, high and low, can just be mur­dered. So we have to keep the fo­cus on the im­puni­ty with which these things are done."Jug­gling with crime sta­tis­tics does not al­ter the ba­sic facts ... that life in Trinidad is worth noth­ing and a per­son can take your life and just laugh. I am not say­ing this be­cause I am griev­ed, I have been say­ing this for ten years in my col­umn ... what can you say?" Daly asked.

He said so­ci­ety had al­so fall­en in­to a kind of in­dif­fer­ence, where­by an in­ci­dent could be soon for­got­ten."For nine or ten days we moan and groan and talk about Dana and then we just move on to the next thing with noth­ing be­ing re­solved," he said.

"All our gov­ern­ments, go­ing back a long way, have set a stan­dard where you mea­sure the worth of a hu­man be­ing and you mea­sure ac­com­plish­ment by the ac­qui­si­tion of ma­te­r­i­al goods. No thought has been giv­en in im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of our civil­i­sa­tion...we just don't tack­le the so­cial-de­vel­op­ment things...we just buy ma­te­r­i­al things, dri­ve a big car, get a pri­or­i­ty bus route pass." On whether at­tor­neys should have spe­cial pro­tec­tion, Daly dis­agreed, ask­ing what made an at­tor­ney's life dif­fer­ent from that of an­oth­er per­son.

"That is the slop­pi­ness of the whole think­ing. What makes an at­tor­ney's life any dif­fer­ent from a jock­ey or a dish­wash­er?"Should we pro­tect doc­tors? They save lives. As much as I am a prac­tis­ing at­tor­ney, I recog­nise doc­tors save lives. So all the at­tor­neys are go­ing to jump up and down now with weak knees or with shak­ing knees and say, 'Pro­tect us'?" Daly asked.He said giv­en the kinds of cas­es See­ta­hal was in­volved in she could have been the tar­get of a hit. But this, he added, was the risk which came with the pro­fes­sion.

"If that is the oc­cu­pa­tion­al haz­ard of be­ing an at­tor­ney in this coun­try then we have to ac­cept that. We can't be jump­ing up and down and cry­ing, 'Give us spe­cial pro­tec­tion.'"We have to at­tack the un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions which make it pos­si­ble for some­body to or­der a hit and for a hit to be car­ried out fre­quent­ly in broad day­light with com­plete im­puni­ty."He said so­cial de­vel­op­ment poli­cies and ef­fi­cient and mo­ti­vat­ed law-en­force­ment of­fi­cers were ur­gent­ly need­ed.

"It has to mat­ter that some­body, re­gard­less of whether high or low, has been killed with im­puni­ty," Daly added.