De­spite talk of pre­ven­ta­tive an­ti- crime mea­sures, the Gov­ern­ment al­lowed banned Ja­maican dance­hall artiste Mova­do-no­to­ri­ous for lyrics of vi­o­lence -to en­ter T&T, PNM MP Don­na Cox said yes­ter­day.

Cox spoke about the is­sue dur­ing Low­er House de­bate on the An­ti -ter­ror­ism Bill. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy, pi­lot­ing the bill, said it would iden­ti­fy and freeze ter­ror­ist as­sets, con­fis­cate funds in mon­ey laun­der­ing op­er­a­tions and al­low for scruti­ny by the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU). Cox, how­ev­er, said she was con­cerned about the se­ri­ous­ness of the Gov­ern­ment's an­ti-crime thrust af­ter ex­empt­ing Mova­do from a ban on him.

She not­ed Mova­do was banned from oth­er Caribbean coun­tries-grap­pling with crime-be­cause of his lyrics of vi­o­lence and an­ti-gay slurs. Cox said Mova­do was banned as a prin­ci­pled pol­i­cy by the last gov­ern­ment. She ques­tioned how an ex­emp­tion could be made by this ad­min­is­tra­tion sim­ply on the be­hest of con­cert pro­mot­ers. "This is an un­ex­plained ex­emp­tion to a breach of a se­ri­ous pol­i­cy de­ci­sion-why ex­act­ly was the ban lift­ed...Are they se­ri­ous about crime and putting ef­fec­tive mea­sures in place?" Cox said.

She asked if mea­sures in the bill would be lift­ed on the be­hest of some­one or if some­one in­ter­vened for them. On the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion, she said: "From what I see tak­ing place so far, I urge the peo­ple of T&T to pray." Gov­ern­ment MP Su­ruj Ram­bachan's con­tri­bu­tion to de­bate was halt­ed when the House had to be sus­pend­ed for 45 min­utes while an elec­tri­cal prob­lem was dealt with. The Fire Ser­vice was called as stand­by as­sis­tance in the sit­u­a­tion.