At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) opin­ion on leg­is­la­tion to im­ple­ment the death penal­ty is il­log­i­cal and un­ten­able. Ram­lo­gan said this in re­sponse to Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley's po­si­tion that while the PNM sup­port­ed the death penal­ty it would con­tin­ue to vote against any bill which sought to cat­e­gorise mur­ders in T&T. Row­ley said by cat­e­goris­ing mur­ders the death penal­ty would not be car­ried out as con­vict­ed killers would get a new av­enue to de­lay their ex­e­cu­tions.

He said they would chal­lenge their cat­e­gori­sa­tion in court and that could sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­lay the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the death penal­ty. He said that would be es­pe­cial­ly so be­cause of the Privy Coun­cil's Pratt and Mor­gan rul­ing for con­vict­ed killers to be hanged with­in five years of their con­vic­tion. But Ram­lo­gan said Row­ley "con­tin­ues to demon­strate his lack of class and un­suit­abil­i­ty for high pub­lic of­fice." Ram­lo­gan claimed that was so be­cause of Row­ley's "re­fusal" to ac­knowl­edge and mean­ing­ful­ly re­spond to two let­ters he sent to him for clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the PNM rec­om­men­da­tions for con­sid­er­a­tion and pos­si­bly in­clu­sion in a new bill to al­low for the ex­e­cu­tion of the death penal­ty in T&T.

Row­ley, how­ev­er, said on Wednes­day he had no in­ten­tion of re­spond­ing to the let­ters as the PNM's po­si­tion and rec­om­men­da­tions were al­ready out­lined in a pub­lic de­bate on the mat­ter in Par­lia­ment al­most one year ago. But Ram­lo­gan hit back yes­ter­day, say­ing: "His re­sponse un­der­scores his ig­no­rance and ar­ro­gance on this se­ri­ous and im­por­tant mat­ter." Row­ley said Ram­lo­gan's let­ters were "im­per­ti­nent" and added noth­ing to the mat­ter at hand. Ram­lo­gan said Row­ley's ad­mis­sion that the Op­po­si­tion had no fur­ther role to play in the mat­ter was "a star­tling ab­di­ca­tion of the PNM's po­lit­i­cal and con­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go." He said: "It is an at­tempt to hood­wink the pop­u­la­tion in­to think­ing that the PNM sup­ports the death penal­ty when it does not."